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STATE  NORMAL  SCHOOL, 

IjOS  JINCELjES,  CALi. 


ON   SELF-CULTURE 


ON 

SELF-CULTURE 

Intellectual,  Physical,  and  Moral 
21  babe  iHecnm  for  gonng  Men  anb  Smbcnts 

BY 

JOHN   STUART   BLACKIE 

PKOFBSSOR  OF  GREEK   IN  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  EDINBimOM 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S   SONS 

i«95 


RIVERSIDE,    CAMBRIDGE: 

STEREOTYPED  AND    PRINTEDBY 

H.   O.  HOUGHTON  AND  COMPANY. 


CONTENTS. 


The  Culture  of  the  Intellect  .  .  .  .  7 
On  Physical  Culture  ••••..  53 
On  Moral  Culture 73 


THE   CULTURE   OF   THE 
INTELLECT 

Es  ist  immer  gut  etwas  zu  wissen.  —  Goethb 


^ 

^ 

'^^ 


THE 

CULTURE  OF  THE  INTELLECT. 


I.  ^N  modern  times  instruction  is  communi- 
cated by  means  of  Books.  Books  are  no  doubt 
very  useful  helps  to  knowledge,  and  in  some 
measure  also,  to  the  practice  of  useful  arts  and 
accomplishments  ;  but  they  are  not,  in  any 
case,  the  primary  and  natural  sources  of  cul- 
ture, and,  in  my  opinion,  their  virtue  is  not  a 
little  apt  to  be  overrated,  even  in  those  branches 
of  acquirement  where  they  seem  most  indis- 
pensable. They  are  not  creative  powers  in 
any  sens^  ;  they  are  merely  helps,  instruments, 
tools,  and  even  as  tools  they  are  only  artificial 
tools,  superadded  to  those  with  which  the 
wise  prevision  of  Nature  has  equipped  us,  like 
telescopes  and  microscopes,  whose  assistance 
in  many  researches  reveals  unimagincd  won- 
ders, but  the  use  of  which  should  never  tempt 
us  to  undervalue  or  to  neglect  the  e-xercise  of 
our  own  eyes.  The  original  and  proper  sources 
of  knowledge  are  not  books,  but  life,  experience, 


lO  THE   CULTURE  OF 

personal  thinking,  feeling,  and  acting.  When 
a  man  starts  with  these,  books  can  fill  up  many 
gaps,  correct  much  that  is  inaccurate,  and  ex- 
tend much  that  is  inadequate  1  but,  without 
living  experience  to  work  on,  Dooks  are  like 
rain  and  sunshine  fallen  on  unbroken  soil. 

"  The  parchment  roll,  is  that  the  holy  river, 
From  which  one  draught  shall  slake  the  thirst  forever  ? 
The  quickening  power  of  science  only  he 
Can  know,  from  whose  own  soul  it  gushes  free." 

This  is  expressed,  no  doubt,  somewhat  in  a 
poetical  fashion,  but  it  contains  a  great  general 
truth.  As  a  treatise  on  mineralogy  can  con- 
vey no  real  scientific  knowledge  to  a  man  who 
has  never  seen  a  mineral,  so  neither  can  works 
of  literature  and  poetry  instruct  the  mere 
scholar  who  is  ignorant  of  life,  nor  discourses 
on  music  him  who  has  no  experience  of  sweet 
sounds,  nor  gospel  sermons  him  who  has  no 
devotion  in  his  soul  or  purity  in  his  life.  All 
knowledge  which  comes  from  books  comes  in- 
directly, by  reflection,  and  by  echo  ;  true 
knowledge  grows  from  a  living  root  in  the 
thinking  soul ;  and  whatever  it  may  appro- 
priate from  without,  it  takes  by  living  assimi- 
lation into  a  living  organism,  not  by  mere 
borrowing:. 


&• 


.(: 


I    therefore   earnestly  advise   all   young 


THE  INTELLECT.  11 

men  to  commence  their  studies,  as  much  as 
possible,  by  direct  Observation  of  Facts, 
and  not  by  the  mere  inculcation  of  statements 
from  books.)  A  useful  book  was  written  with 
the  title,  —  "  How  to  Observe."  These  three 
words  might  serve  as  a  motto  to  guide  us  in 
the  most  important  part  of  our  early  education 
•^a  part,  unfortunately,  only  too  much  neg- 
lected. All  the  natural  sciences  are  particu- 
larly valuable,  not  only  as  supplying  the  mind 
with  the  most  rich,  various,  and  beautiful  fur- 
niture, but  as  teaching  people  that  most  useful 
of  all  arts,  how  to  use  their  eyes,  j*  It  is  as- 
tonishing how  much  we  all^o  about  with  our 
eyes  open,  and  yet  seeing  nothing.  This  is 
because  the  orga^  of  vision,  like  other  organs, 
requires  training ;  and  by  lack  of  training  and 
the  slavish  dependence  on  books,  becomes  dull 
and  slow,  and  ultimately  incapable  of  exercising 
its  natural  function.  Let  those  studies,  there- 
fore, both  in  school  and  college,  be  regarded 
as  primary,  that  teach  young  persons  to  know 
what  they  are  seeing,  and,  to  see  what  they 
otherwise  would  fail  to  see**  Among  the  most 
useful  are.  Botany,  Zoology,  Mineralogy,  Ge- 
ology, Chemistry,  Architecture,  Drawing,  and 
the  Fine  Arts.  How  many  a  Highland  ex- 
cursion and  continental  tour  have  been  ren- 
dered comparatively  useless  to  young  persons 


12  THE  CULTURE  OF 

well  drilled  in  their  books,  merely  Irom  the 
want  of  a  little  elementary  knowledge  in  these 
sciences  of  observation. 

1 1 1.(  Observation  is  good,  and  accurate  ob- 
servation is  better ;  but,  on  account  of  the 
vast  variety  of  objects  in  the  universe,  the  ob- 
serving faculty  would  be  overwhelmed  and 
confounded,  did  we  hot^  possess  some  sure 
method  of  submitting  their  imiltrtude  to  a  cer- 
tain regulative  principle  placing  them  under 
the  control  of  our  minds.  This  regulative 
principle  is  what  we  call  CLASSiFicATiox.Jand 
is  discoverable  by  human  reason,  becaii^e  it 
clearly  exists  everywhere  in  a  world  which  is 
the  manifestation  of  Divine  reason.  This 
classification  depends  on  the  fundamental  unity 
of  type  which  the  Divine  reason  has  imposed 
on  all  things.  This  unity  manifests  itself  in 
the  creation  of  points  of  likeness  in  things 
apparently  the  most  different ;  and  it  is  these 
points  of  likeness  which,  when  seized  by  a 
nicely  observant  eye,  enable  it  to  distribute 
the  immense  variety  of  things  in  the  world 
into  certain  parcels  of  greater  or  less  compass, 
called  genera  and  species,  which  submit  them- 
selves naturally  to  the  control  of  a  comparing 
and  discriminating  mind.  The  first  business 
of  the  student,  therefore,  is,  in  all  that  he  sees, 


TFIE  INTELLECT.  1 3 

to  observe  carefully  the  points  of  likeness,  and, 
along  with  these,  also  the  most  striking  points 
of  difference  ;  for  the  points  of  difference  go 
as  necessarily  along  with  the  points  of  likeness, 
as  shadow  goes  along  with  light  ;  and  though 
they  do  not  of  themselves  constitute  any  actual 
thing,  yet  they  separate  one  genus  from  an- 
other, and  one  species  of  the  same  genus  from 
another.  (The  classification  or  order  to  be 
sought  for  in  all  things  is  a  natural  order ; 
artificial  arrangements,  such  as  that  of  words  a  a 
in  an  alphabetical  dictionary,  or  of  flowers  tnJah^^^^ 
th«-lanj^aRan  systptn   -"fJlCltflP.yj  "^ay  be   useful    '-    - 

helps  to  learners"  in  an  early  stage,  but,  if  ex- 
clusively used,  are  rather  hindrances  to  true 
knowledge.  What  a  young  man  should  aim 
at  is  to  acquire  a  habit  of  binding  things  to- 
gether according  to  their  bonds  of  natural 
-affitrrt5r^  and  this  can  be  done  only  by  a  com- 
bination of  a  broad  view  of  the  general  effect, 
with  an  accurate  observation  of  the  special 
properties.  The  names  given  by  the  common 
people  to  flowers  are  instances  of  superficial 
similarity,  without  any  attempt  at  discrimina- 
tion, as  when  a  water-lily  seems  by  its  name 
to  indicate  that  it  is  a  species  of  lily,  with 
which  flower  it  has  no  real  connection.  A 
botanist,  on  the  other  hand,  who  has  minutely 
observed  the  character  and  organs  of  plants 


14  THE   CULTURE   OF 

will  class  a  water-lily  rather  with  the  papav- 
erous or  poppy  family,  and  give  you  very 
good  reasons  for  doing  so.  In  order  to  assist 
in  forming  habits  of  observation  in  this  age 
of  locomotion,  I  should  advise  young  men 
never  to  omit  visiting  the  local  museums  of 
any  district,  as  often  as  they  may  have  an  op- 
portunity ;  and  when  there  to  confine  their 
attention  generally  to  that  one  thing  which 
is  most  characteristic  of  the  locality.  Looking 
at  everything  generally  ends  in  remembering 
nothing. 

IV.lUpon  the  foundation  of  carefully-ob- 
served and  well-assorted  facts  the  mind  pro- 
ceeds to  build  a  more  subtle  structure  by  the 
process  which  we  call  REAsmfiNG.  We  would 
know  not  only  that  things  are  so  and  so,  but 
how  they  are,  and /i?r  luJiat  pjirpose  they  are.} 
The  essential  unity  of  the  Divine  Mind  causes 
a  necessary  unity  in  the  processes  by  which 
things  exist  and  grow,  no  less  than  a  unity  in 
the  type  of  their  manifold  genera  and  species ; 
and  into  both  manifestations  of  Divine  unity 
we  are,  by  the  essential  unity  of  our  divinely 
emanated  human  souls,  compelled  to  inquire. 
Our  human  reason,  as  proceeding  from  the  Di- 
vine reason,  is  constantly  employed  in  working 
out  a  unity  or  consistency  of  plan,  to  speak 


THE  INTELLECT.  1 5 

more  popularly,  in  the  processes  of  our  own 
little  lives  ;  and  we  are  thus  naturally  deter- 
mined  to  seek  for  such  a  unity,  consistency, 
and  necessary  dependence,  in  all  the  operations 
of  a  world  which  exists  only,  as  has  been  well 
said,  "  in  reason,  by  reason,  and  for  reason."  ^ 
The  quality  of  mind,  which  determines  a  man 
to  seek  out  this  unity  in  the  chain  of  things,  is 
what  phrenologists  call  causality  ;  for  the  cause 
of  a  thing,  as  popularly  understood,  is  merely 
that  point  in  the  necessary  succession  of  di- 
vinely-originated forces  which  immediately  pre- 
cedes it.  There  are  few  human  beings  so  con- 
tentedly superficial  as  to  feed  habitually  on  the 
knowledge  of  mere  unexplained  facts  ;  on  the 
contrary,  as  we  find  every  day,  the  ready  as- 
sumption of  any  cause  for  a  fact,  rather  than 
remain  content  with  none,  affords  ample  proof 
that  the  search  for  causes  is  characteristic  of  q 
every  normal  human  intellect.  ^What  young 
mep'frave-  chiefly  1j6'  look  to  it»-tbi»  matter  »  to 
avoid  being  imposed  on  by  the  easy  habit  of 
taking  an  accidental  sequence  or  circumstance 
for  a  real  cause.  \  It  may  be  easy  to  understand 
that  the  abundant  rain  on  the  west  coast  of 
Britain  is  caused  by  the  vicinity  of  the  Atlan- 
tic Ocean ;  and  not  very  difficult  to  compre- 
hend  how  the   comparative   mildness   of  the 

^  Stirling  on  Protoplasm  —  a  n?.asterly  tract. 


1 6  THE  CULTURE  OF 

winter  season  at  Oban,  as  compared  with  Edin« 
burgh  or  Aberdeen,  is  caused  by  the  impact  of 
a  broad  current  of  warm  water  from  the  Gulf 
of  Mexico.  But  in  the  region  of  morals  and 
politics,  where  facts  are  often  much  more  com- 
plex, and  passions  are  generally  strong,  we  con- 
stantly find  examples  of  a  species  of  reasoning 
which  assumes  without  proving  the  causal  de- 
pendency of  the  facts  on  which  it  is  based,  I 
once  heard  a  political  discourse  by  a  noted 
demagogue,  which  consisted  of  the  assertion, 
in  various  forms  and  with  various  illustrations, 
of  the  proposition  that  all  the  miseries  of  this 
country  arise  from  its  monarchico-aristocratic 
government,  and  that  they  could  all  be  cured, 
as  by  the  stroke  of  a  magician's  wand,  by  the 
introduction  of  a  perfectly  democratic  govern- 
ment —  a  species  of  argumentation  vitiated,  as 
is  obvious  all  through,  by  the  assumption  of 
one  imaginary  cause  to  all  social  evils,  and  an 
equally  imaginary  cure.  In  the  cultivation  of 
habits  of  correct  reasoning,  I  would  certainly, 
in  the  first  place,  earnestly  advise  young  men 
to  submit  themselves  for  a  season,  after  the  old 
Platonic  recipe,  to  a  system  of  thorough  mathe- 
matical training."^This  will  strengthen  the 
binding  power  of  the  mind,  which  is  necessary 
for  all  sorts  of  reasoning))pnd  teach  the  inex 
^rienced  really  to  know\what  necessary  d» 


THE  INTELLECT.  ly 

penclence,  unavoidable  sequence,  or  pure  caus- 
ality means.  But  they  must  not  stop  here  ;  for 
the  reasonings  of  mathematics  being  founded 
on  theoretical  assumptions  and  conditions 
which,  when  once  given,  are  liable  to  no  vari- 
ation or  disturbance,  can  never  be  an  adequate 
discipline  for  the  great  and  most  important 
class  of  human  conclusions,  which  are  founded 
on  a  complexity  of  curiously  acting  and  react- 
ing facts  and  forces  liable  to  various  disturbing 
influences,  which  even  the  wisest  sometimes 
fail  to  calculate  correctly.  On  political,  moral, 
and  social  questions,  our  reasonings  are  not  less 
certain  than  in  mathematics  ;  they  are  only 
more  difficult  and  more  comprehensive  ;  and 
the  great  dangers  to  be  avoided  here  are  one- 
sided observation,  hasty  conclusions,  and  the 
distortion  of  intellectual  vision,  caused  by  per- 
sonal passions  and  party  interests.  The  poli- 
tician who  fails  in  solving  a  political  problem, 
fails  not  from  the  uncertainty  of  the  science, 
but  either  from  an  imperfect  knowledge  of  the 
facts,  or  from  the  action  of  passions  and  inter- 
ests, which  prevent  him  from  making  a  just  ap- 
preciation of  the  facts. 

V.  At  this  point  I  can  imagine  it  is  not  un- 
likely that  some  young  man  may  be  inclined  to 
ask  me  whether  I  should  advise  him,  with  the 


1 8  THE  CULTURE  OF 

view  of  strengthening  his  reasoning  powers,  to 
enter  upon  a  formal  study  of  logic  and  meta- 
physics. To  this  I  answer,  By  all  means,  if  you 
have  first,  in  a  natural  way,  as  opposed  to  mere 
scholastic  discipline,  acquired  the  general  habit 
of  thinking  and  reasoning.  A  man  has  learned 
to  walk  first  by  having  legs,  and  then  by  using 
them.  After  that  he  may  go  to  a  drill-sergeant 
and  learn  to  march,  and  to  perform  various  tac- 
tical evolutions,  which  no  experience  of  mere 
untrained  locomotion  can  produce.  So  exactly 
it  is  with  the  art  of  thinking.  Have  your 
thinking  first,  and  plenty  to  think  about,  and 
then  ask  the  logician  to  teach  you  to  scrutinize 
with  a  nice  eye  the  process  by  which  you  have 
arrived  at  your  conclusions.  In  such  fashion 
there  is  no  doubt  that  the  study  of  logic  may 
be  highly  beneficial.  But  as  this  science,  like 
mathematics,  has  no  real  contents,  and  merely 
sets  forth  in  order  the  universal  forms  under 
which  all  thinking  is  exercised,  it  must  always 
be  a  very  barren  affair  to  attempt  obtaining 
from  pure  logic  any  rich  growth  of  thought  that 
will  bear  ripe  fruit  in  the  great  garden  of  life. 
One  may  as  well  expect  to  make  a  great  patriot 
—  a  Bruce  or  a  Wallace  —  of  a  fencing  master, 
as  to  make  a  great  thinker  out  of  a  mere  logi 
?ian.  Sc  it  is  in  truth  with  all  formal  studies. 
Grammar  and  rhetoric  are  equally  barren,  and 


THE  INTELLECT.  1 9 

bear  fruit  only  when  dealing  with  materials 
given  by  life  and  experience.  A  meagre  soul 
can  never  be  made  fat,  nor  a  narrow  soul  large 
by  studying  rules  of  thinking.  An  intense  vi- 
tality, a  wide  sympathy,  a  keen  observation,  a 
various  experience,  is  worth  all  the  logic  of  the 
schools  ;  and  yet  the  logic  is  not  useless  ;  it 
has  a  regulative,  not  a  creative  virtue  ;  it  is 
useful  to  thinking  as  the  study  of  anatomy  is 
useful  to  painting  ;  it  gives  you  a  more  firm 
hold  of  the  jointing  and  articulation  of  your 
framework  ;  but  it  can  no  more  produce  true 
knowledge  than  anatomy  can  produce  beautiful 
painting.  It  performs  excellent  service  in  the 
exposure  of  error  and  the  unveiling  of  sophis- 
try ;  but  to  proceed  far  in  the  discovery  of  im- 
portant truth,  it  must  borrow  its  moving  power 
from  fountains  of  living  water,  which  flow  not 
in  the  schools,  and  its  materials  from  the  facts 
of  the  breathing  universe,  with  which  no  mu- 
seum is  furnished.  So  it  is  likewise  with  meta- 
physics. This  science  is  useful  for  two  ends, 
first — to  acquaint  ourselves  with  the  necessary 
limits  of  the  human  faculties  ;  it  tends  to  clip 
the  wings  of  our  conceit,  and  to  make  us  feel, 
by  a  little  floundering  and  flouncing  in  deep 
bottomless  seas  of  speculation,  that  the  world 
is  a  much  bigger  place  than  we  had  imagined, 
9.nd  cur  thoughts  about  it  of  much  less  signifi- 


JO  THE  CULTURE  OF 

cance.  A  negative  result  this,  you  will  say,  but 
not  the  less  important  for  that ;  the  knowledge 
of  limits  is  the  first  postulate  of  wisdom,  and 
it  is  better  to  practice  walking  steadily  on  the 
solid  earth  to  which  we  belong,  than  to  usurp 
the  function  of  birds,  like  Icarus,  and  achieve 
a  sorry  immortality  by  baptizing  the  deep  sea 
with  our  name.  The  other  use  of  metaphysics 
is  positive  ;  it  teaches  us  to  be  familiar  with 
the  great  fundamental  truths  on  which  the  fab- 
ric of  all  the  sciences  rests.  Metaphysics  is 
not,  like  logic,  a  purely  formal  science  ;  it  is, 
on  the  contrary,  the  science  of  fundamental 
and  essential  reality,  of  that  which  underlies 
all  appearances,  as  the  soul  of  a  man  underlies 
his  features  and  his  fleshly  framework,  and  sur- 
vives all  changes  as  their  permanent  type.  It 
is  that  which  we  come  to  when  we  get  behind 
the  special  phenomena  presented  by  individual 
sciences  ;  it  is  neither  botany,  nor  physiology, 
nor  geology,  nor  astronomy,  nor  chemistry,  nor 
anthropology,  but  those  general,  all-pervading, 
and  all-controlling  powers,  forces,  and  essences, 
of  which  each  special  branch  of  knowledge  is 
only  a  single  aspect  or  manifestation  ;  it  is  the 
common  element  of  all  existence  ;  and  as  aU 
existence  is  merely  a  grand  evolution  of  self- 
determining  reason  (for,  were  it  not  for  the  in 
dwelling:  reason  the  world  would  be  a   chao» 


THE  INTELLECT.  21 

and  not  a  cosmos),  it  follows  that  metaphysics 
is  the  knowledge  of  the  absolute  or  cosmic 
reason  so  far  as  it  is  knowable  by  our  limitea 
individualized  reason,  and  is  therefore,  as  Aris- 
totle long  ago  remarked,  identical  with  theol- 
ogy.^ Indeed,  the  idea  of  God  as  the  absolute 
self-existent,  self-energizing,  self-determining 
Reason,  is  the  only  idea  which  can  make  the 
world  intelligible,  and  has  justly  been  held  fast 
by  all  the  great  thinkers  of  the  world,  from 
Pythagoras  down  to  Hegel,  as  the  alone  key- 
stone of  all  sane  thinking.  By  all  means, 
therefore,  let  metaphysics  be  studied,  especially 
in  this  age  and  place,  where  the  novelty  of  a 
succession  of  brilliant  discoveries  in  physical 
science,  coupled  with  a  one-sided  habit  of 
mind,  swerving  with  a  strong  bias  towards 
what  is  outward  and  material,  has  led  some 
men  to  imagine  that  in  mere  physics  is  wis- 
dom to  be  found,  and  that  the  true  magician's 
wand  for  striking  out  the  most  important  re- 
sults is  induction.  This  is  the  very  madness 
of  externalism  ;  for,  on  the  one  hand,  the  funda- 
mental and  most  vital  truths  from  which  the 
possibility  of  all  science  hangs,  assert  them- 
selves before  all  induction  ;  and,  on  the  other 
the    physical    sciences     merely    describe    re* 

^    Tpl'a   yiVT\  tSiV   BfCilpTfTlKtl)!'  ^TTIffTTI/JLWV 

^vffiK^,  fuiOrifxaTtKq,  dtoKoyiKi].  —  Metaph.  x.  "J. 


22  THE   CULTURE  OF 

quences,  which  the  superficial  may  mistake  for 
causes.  Their  so-called  laws  are  merely  meth* 
ods  of  operation  ;  and  the  operator,  of  whom, 
without  transgressing  their  special  sphere,  they 
can  take  no  account,  is  always  and  everywhere 
the  absolute,  omnipresent,  all-plastic  Reason, 
which  we  call  God,  whose  offspring,  as  the 
pious  old  Greek  poet  sung,  we  all  are,  and  in 
whom,  as  the  great  apostle  preached,  we  live, 
and  move,  and  have  our  being.  An  essentially 
reasonable  theology,  and  an  essentially  reverent 
speculation,  are  the  metaphysics  which  a  young 
man  may  fitly  commence  to  seek  after  in  the 
schools,  but  which  he  can  find  only  by  the  ex- 
perience of  a  truthful  and  a  manly  life  ;  and  he 
will  then  know  that  he  has  found  it,  when,  like 
King  David  and  the  noble  army  of  Hebrew 
psalmists,  he  can  repose  upon  the  quiet  faith 
of  it,  like  a  child  upon  the  bosom  of  its  mother. 

VI.'  Xhe-uext  function  of  the  mind  which  re- 
quires special  culture  is  the  Imagination. t^ 
much  fear  neither  teachers  nor  scholars  are  suf- 
ficiently impressed  with  the  importance  of  a 
proper  training  of  this  faculty.  Some  there 
may  be  who  despise  it  altogether,-as  having  to 
do  with  fiction  rather  than  with  fact,  and  of  no 
value  to  the  severe  student  who  wishes  to  ac* 
quire  e.xact  knowledge.      But   this  is  not.  the 


THE  INTELLECT.  23 

case.  It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  the  highest 
class  of  scientific  men  have  been  led  to  their 
most  important  discoveries  by  the  quickening 
power  of  a  suggestive  imagination.  Of  this  the 
poet  Goethe's  original  observations  in  botany 
and  osteology  may  serve  as  an  apt  witness. 
Imagination,  therefore,  is  the  enemy  of  science 
only  when  it  acts  without  reason,  that  is,  arbi- 
trarily and  whimsically  ;  with  reason,  it  is  often 
the  best  and  the  most  indispensable  of  allies. 
Besides,  in  history,  and  in  the  whole  region  of 
concrete  facts,  imagination  is  as  necessary  as 
in  poetry  ;  the  historian,  indeed,  cannot  invent 
his  facts,  but  he  must  mould  them  and  dispose 
them  with  a  graceful  congruity  ;  and  to  do  this 
is  the  work  of  the  imagination.  Fairy  tales 
and  fictitious  narratives  of  all  kinds,  of  course, 
have  their  value,  and  may  be  wisely  used  in  the 
culture  of  the  imagination.  But  by  far  the 
most  useful  exercise  of  this  faculty  is  when  it 
buckles  itself  to  realities  ;  and  this  I  advise 
the  student  chiefly  to  cultivate.  There  is  no 
need  of  going  to  romances  for  pictures  of  hu- 
man character  and  fortune  calculated  to  please 
the  fancy  and  to  elevate  the  imagination.  The 
life  of  Alexander  the  Great,  of  Martin  Luther, 
of  Gustavus  Adolphus,  or  any  of  those  notable 
characters  on  the  great  stage  of  the  world, 
who  incarnate  t'.ie  history  which  they  create^ 


24  THE  CULTURE  OF 

is  for  this  purpose  of  more  educational  value 
than  the  best  novel  that  ever  was  written,  or 
even  the  best  poetry.  Not  all  minds  delight 
in  poetry  ;  but  all  minds  are  impressed  and 
elevated  by  an  imposing  and  a  striking  fact. 
To  exercise  the  imagination  on  the  lives  of 
great  and  good  men  brings  with  it  a  doulle 
gain  ;  for  by  this  exercise  we  learn  at  a  single 
stroke,  and  in  the  most  effective  way,  both 
what  was  done  and  what  ought  to  be  done. 
But  to  train  the  imagination  adequately,  it  is 
not  enough  that  elevating  pictures  be  made  to 
float  pleasantly  before  the  fancy  ;  from  such 
mere  passiveness  of  mental  attitude  no  strength 
can  grow.  The  student  should  formally  call 
upon  his  imaginative  faculty  to  take  a  firm 
grasp  of  the  lovely  shadows  as  they  pass,  and 
not  be  content  till  —  closing  the  gray  record 
—  he  can  make  the  whole  storied  procession 
pass  before  him  in  due  order,  with  appropriate 
badges,  attitude,  and  expression.  As  there  are 
persons  who  seem  to  walk  through  life  with 
their  eyes  open,  seeing  nothing,  so  there  are 
others  who  read  through  books,  and  perhaps 
even  cram  themselves  with  facts,  without  car- 
rying away  any  living  pictures  of  significant 
Btory  which  might  arouse  the  fancy  in  an  hour 
of  leisure,  or  gird  them  with  endurance  in  3 
moment  of  difficulty.     Ask  yourself,  therefore, 


THE  INTELLECT.  2$ 

always  when  you  have  read  a  chapter  of  any 
notable  book,  not  what  you  saw  printed  on  a 
gray  page,  but  what  you  see  pictured  in  the 
glowing  gallery  of  your  imagination.  Have 
your  fancy  always  vivid,  and  full  of  body  and 
color.  Count  yourself  uot  t«-krrcrw  a-fact  when 
,3W^knowthat  it  took  place,  but4i>»«-only  when 
jroil£^e^it  as  it  did  take  place. 

VII.  The  word  imagination,  though  denoting 
a  faculty  which  in  some  degree  may  be  re- 
garded as  belonging  to  every  human  being, 
seems  more  particularly  connected  with  that 
class  of  intellectual  perceptions  and  emotions 
which,  for  want  of  a  native  term,  we  are  accus- 
tomed to  call  aesthetical.  A  man  may  live,  and 
live  bravely,  without  much  imagination,  as  a 
house  may  be  well  compacted  to  keep  out  wind 
and  rain,  and  let  in  light,  and  yet  be  ugly.  But 
no  one  would  voluntarily  prefer  to  live  in  an 
ugly  house  if  he  could  get  a  beautiful  one.  So 
beauty,  which  is  the  natural  food  of  a  healthy 
imagination,  should  be  sought  after  by  every 
one  who  wishes  to  achieve  the  great  end  of 
existence  —  that  is,  to  make  the  most  of  him- 
self. If  it  is  true,  as  we  have  just  remarked, 
that  man  liveth  not  by  books  alone,  it  is  equally 
true  that  he  liveth  not  by  knowledge  alone. 
*  It  is  always  good  to  know  something,"  was 


26  THE   CULTURE   OF 

the  wise  utterance  of  one  of  the  wisest  men  of 
modern  times  ;  but  by  this  utterance  he  did 
not  mean  to  assert  that  mere  indiscriminate 
knowing  is  always  good  ;  what  he  meant  to  say 
was  that  it  is  wise  for  a  man  to  pick  up  care- 
fully, for  possible  uses,  whatever  may  fall  under 
his  eye,  even  though  it  should  not  be  the  best. 
The  best,  of  course,  is  not  always  at  command  ; 
and  the  bad,  on  which  we  frequently  stumble, 
is  not  without  its  good  element,  which  one 
should  not  disdain  to  secure  in  passing  ;  but 
what  the  young  man  ought  to  set  before  him, 
as  a  worthy  object  of  systematic  pursuit,  is  not 
knowledge  in  general,  or  of  anything  indiffer- 
ently, but  knowledge  of  what  is  great  and  beau- 
tiful and  good  ;  and  this,  so  far  as  the  imagi- 
nation is  concerned,  can  be  attained  only  by 
some  special  attention  paid  to  the  aesthetical 
culture  of  the  intellect.  In  other  words,  poe- 
try, painting,  music,  and  the  fine  arts  generally, 
which  delight  to  manifest  the  sublime  and  the 
beautiful  in  every  various  aspect  and  attitude, 
fall  under  the  category,  not  of  an  accidental 
accomplishment,  but  of  an  essential  and  most 

oble  blossom  of  a  cultivated  soul.  A  man  who 
knows  merely  with  a  keen  glance,  and  acts  with 
a  firm  hand,  may  do  very  well  for  the  rough 
work  of  the  world,  but  he  may  be  a  very  un- 
gracious and  unlovely  creature  withal ;  angular 


THE  INTELLECT.  2J 

square,  dogmatical,  persistent,  pertinacious,  pug- 
nacious, blushless,  and  perhaps  bumptious.  To 
bevel  down  the  corners  of  a  character  so  con- 
stituted by  a  little  aesthetical  culture,  were  a 
work  of  no  small  benefit  to  society,  and  a  source 
of  considerable  comfort  to  the  creature  himself. 
Let  a  young  man,  therefore,  commence  with 
supplying  his  imaginative  faculty  with  its  nat- 
ural food  in  the  shape  of  beautiful  objects  of 
every  kind.  If  there  is  a  fine  building  recently 
erected  in  the  town,  let  him  stand  and  look  at 
it ;  if  there  are  fine  pictures  exhibited,  let  him 
never  be  so  preoccupied  with  the  avocations  of 
his  own  special  business  that  he  cannot  afford 
even  a  passing  glance  to  steal  a  taste  of  their 
beauty  ;  if  there  are  dexterous  riders  and  ex- 
pert tumblers  in  the  circus,  let  him  not  imagine 
that  their  supple  somersets  are  mere  idle  tricks 
to  amuse  children  ;  they  are  cunning  exhibi- 
tions of  the  wonderful  strength  and  litheness 
of  the  human  limbs,  which  every  wise  man 
ought  to  admire.  In  general,  let  the  young 
man,  ambitious  of  intellectual  excellence,  culti- 
vate admiration  ;  it  is  by  admiration  only  of 
what  is  beautiful  and  sublime  that  we  can  mount 
up  a  few  steps  towards  the  likeness  of  what  we 
admire  ;  and  he  who  wonders  not  largely  and 
nabilually,  in  the  midst  of  this  magnificent  uni- 
verse, does  not  prove  that  the  world  has  nothing 


28  THE  CULTURE  OF 

great  in  it  worthy  of  wonder,  but  only  that  his 
own  sympathies  are  narrow,  and  his  capacities 
small.  The  worst  thing  a  young  man  can  do, 
who  \^ishes  to  educate  himself  aesthetically,  ac- 
cording to  the  norm  of  nature,  is  to  begin  cr-it- 
icising,  and  cultivating  the  barren  graces  of  the 
NIL  ADMiRARi.  This  maxim  may  be  excusable 
in  a  worn-out  old  cynic,  but  is  intolerable  in 
the  mouth  of  a  hopeful  young  man.  There  is 
no  good  to  be  looked  for  from  a  youth  who, 
having  done  no  substantial  work  of  his  own, 
sets  up  a  business  of  finding  faults  in  other 
people's  work,  and  calls  this  practice  of  finding 
fault  criticism.  The  first  lesson  that  a  young 
man  has  to  learn,  is  not  to  find  fault,  but  to 
perceive  beauties.  All  criticism  worthy  of  the 
name  is  the  ripe  fruit  of  combined  intellectual 
insight  and  long  experience.  Only  an  old  sol- 
dier can  tell  how  battles  ought  to  be  fought 
Young  men  of  course  may  and  ought  to  have 
opinions  on  many  subjects,  but  there  is  no  rea- 
son why  they  should  print  them.  The  pub- 
lished opinions  of  persons  whose  judgment  has 
not  been  matured  by  experience  can  tend  only 
to  mislead  the  public,  and  to  debauch  the  mind 
of  the  writer. 

I  have  said  that  the  sublime  and  the  beautiful 
In  nature  and  art  are  the  natural  and  healthy 
food  of  the  assthetical  faculties.  The  comical  and 


THE  INTELLECT.  29 

humorous  are  useful  only  in  a  subsidiary  vvay. 
It  is  a  great  loss  to  a  man  when  he  cannot 
laugh  ;  but  a  smile  is  useful  specially  in  enabling 
us  lightly  to  shake  off  the  incongruous,  not  in 
teaching  us  to  cherish  it.  Life  is  an  earnest 
business,  and  no  man  was  ever  made  great  or 
good  by  a  diet  of  broad  grins.  The  grandest 
humor,  such  as  that  of  Aristophanes,  is  valuable 
only  as  the  seasoning  of  the  pudding  or  the 
spice  of  the  pie.  No  one  feeds  on  mere  pepper 
or  vanilla.  Let  a  young  man  furnish  his  soul 
richly,  like  Thorwaldsen's  Museum  at  Copen- 
hagen, with  all  shapes  and  forms  of  excellence, 
from  the  mild  dignity  of  our  Lord  and  the 
Twelve  Apostles  to  the  playful  grace  of  Grecian 
Cupids  and  Hippocampes  ;  but  let  him  not  deal 
in  mere  laughter,  or  corrupt  his  mind's  eye  with 
the  habitual  contemplation  of  distortion  and 
caricature.  There  is  no  more  sure  sign  of  a 
shallow  mind  than  the  habit  of  seeing  always 
the  ludicrous  side  of  things  ;  for  the  ludicrous, 
as  Aristotle  remarks,  is  always  on  the  surface. 
If  the  humorous  novels  and  sketches  of  character 
in  which  this  country  and  this  age  are  so  fruitful, 
are  taken  only  as  an  occasional  recreation,  like  a 
good  comedy,  they  are  to  be  commended  ;  but 
the  practice  and  study  of  the  Fine  Arts  offer 
&  more  healthy  variety  to  severe  students  than 
ihe  converse  with  ridiculous  sketches  of  a  trifling 


30  THE  CULTURE  OF 

or  contemptible  humanity;  and  to  play  a  pleas- 
ant tunc  on  the  piano,  or  turn  a  wise  saying  of 
some  ancient  saj;e  into  the  terms  of  a  terse 
English  couplet,  will  always  be  a  more  profitable 
way  of  unbending  from  the  stern  work  of  pure 
science,  than  the  reading  of  what  are  called 
amusing  books  —  an  occupation  fitted  speciall) 
for  the  most  stagnant  moments  of  life,  and  the 
most  lazy-minded  of  the  living. 

VIII. ^The  n»xt  ^faculty  of  the  mind  that 
demands  special  culture  is  Memory.  It  is  of 
no  use  gathering  treasures  if  we  cannot  store 
them  ;  it  is  equally  useless  to  learn  what  we 
cannot  retain  in  the  memory.  4iappa^,  of  all 
mental  faculties  this  is  that  one  which  is  most 
certainly  improved  by  exercise;  ■taesidp.<^  fhpr<» . 
are  helps  to  a  weak  memory,  such  as "cTS^llUt  ' 
exist  for  a  weak  imagination  or  a  weak  reason- 
ing-{lOAver.  The  most  important  points  to  be 
attended  to  in  securing  the  retention  of  facts 
once  impressed  on  the  imagination,  are — (i) 
The  distinctness,  vividness,  and  intensity  of  thfi-^ 
original  impressioi>.  rX,et  no  man  hope  to  re- 
member^tiHtrat  he  only  vaguely  and  indistinctly 
apprehends.  A  multitude  of  dim  and  weak  im- 
pressions, flowing  in  upon  the  mind  in  a  hur- 
ried way,  soon  vanish  in  a  haze,  which  veils  all 
things,  and  shows  nothing.     It  is  better  for  th« 


THE  INTELLECT.  3 1 

memory  to  have  a  distinct  idea  of  one  fact  of  a 
great  subject,  than  to  have  confused  ideas  of 
the  wholeT?  (2)  Nothing  helps  the  memory  do  ■ 
miir-]-.  ac  .m^r  and  classificationTV  Classes  are 
always  few,  individuaTs""TTniTiy;''to  know  the 
class  well  is  to  know  what  is  most  essential  in 
the  character  of  the  individual,  and  what  least 
burdens  the  memory  to  retain.  |  (3)  The  next 
important  matter  is(^ petition^ if  the  nail  will 
not  go  in  at  one  stroke,  let  it  nave  another  and 
another.!  In  this  domain  nothing  is  denied  to 
a  dogged  pertinacity.  A  man  who  finds  it 
difficult  to  remember  that  Deva  is  the  Sanskrit 
for  a  God,  has  only  to  repeat  it  seven  times  a 
day,  or  seven  times  a  week,  and  he  will  not 
forget  it.  The  less  tenacious  a  man's  memory 
naturally  is,  the  more  determined  ought  he  to 
be  to  complement  it  by  frequent  inculcation. 
Our  faculties,  like  a  slow  beast,  require  flogging 
occasionally,  or  they  make  no  way.  (4)  Again, 
if  memory  be  weak,  causality  is  perhaps  strong  ; 
and  this  point  of  strength,  if  wisely  used,  may 
readily  be  made  to  turn  an  apparent  loss  into  a 
real  gain.  Persons  of  very  quick  memory  may 
be  apt  to  rest  content  with  the  faculty,  and 
exhibit  with  much  applause  the  dexterity  only 
of  an  intellectual  parrot ;  but  the  man  who  is 
9I0W  to  remember  without  a  reason,  searches 
after  the  casual  connection  of  the  facts,  and. 


32  THE  CULTURE  OF 

when  \\z  has  found  it,  binds  together  by  the  bond 
of  rational  sequences  what  the  constitution 
of  his  mind  disincUned  him  to  recc./e  as  an 
arbitrary  and  unexplained  successionr](52yArti- 
fi  c  i  aTjiyiids  _of^as  s  o  cTa  t  i  o  n^4»ay-^§t5'^Me  fTnies 
be  found  usefulTas~wTien  a  schoolboy  remembers 
that  Abydos  is  on  the  Asiatic  coast  of  the 
Hellespont,  because  both  Asia  and  Abydos 
commence  with  the  letter  A  ;  but  such  tricks 
suit  rather  the  necessities  of  an  ill-trained 
governess  than  the  uses  of  a  manly  mind.  I 
have  no  faith  in  the  systematic  use  of  what  are 
called  artificial  mnemonic  systems  ;  they  fill  the 
fancy  with  a  set  of  arbitrary  and  ridiculous 
symbols  which  interfere  with  the  natural  play 
of  the  faculties.  Dates  in  history,  to  which  this 
sort  of  machinery  has  been  generally  applied, 
are  better  recollected  by  the  causal  dependence, 
or  even  the  accidental  contiguity  of  great  names, 
as  when  I  recollect  that  Plato  was  twenty-nine 
years  old  when  Socrates  drank  the  hemlock  ; 
and  that  Aristotle,  the  pupil  of  this  Plato,  was 
himself  the  tutor  of  that  famous  son  of  Philip 
of  Macedon,  who  with  his  conquering  hosts 
caused  the  language  of  Socrates  and  Plato  to 
shake  hands  with  the  sacred  dialect  of  the 
Brahmanic  hymns  on  the  banks  of  the  IndusTj 
(6)  Lastly,  whatev^er  facilities  of  memory  a  man 
may  possess,  let  him  not  despise  the  sure  aids 


THE  INTELLECT.  33 


SO  amply  supplied  by  written  record/}  To  speak 
from  a  paper  certainly  does  not  strengthen,  but 
has  rather  a  tendency  to  enfeeble  the  memory  ; 
but  to  retain  stores  of  readily  available  matter, 
in  the  shape  of  written  or  printed  record,  enables 
a  man  to  command  a  vast  amount  of  accumu- 
lated materials,  at  whatever  moment  he  may 
require  thenT^In  this  view  the  young  student 
cannot  begin  too  early  the  practice  of  inter- 
leaving certain  books,  and  making  a  good  index 
to  others,  or  in  some  such  fashion  tabulating 
his  knowledge  for  apt  and  easy  reference.  Our 
preachers  would  certainly  much  increase  the 
value  of  their  weekly  discourses  if  they  would 
keep  interleaved  Bibles  and  insert  at  apposite 
and  striking  texts  such  facts  in  Hfe,  or  anecdotes 
from  books,  as  might  tend  to  their  illustration. 
They  might  thus,  even  with  a  very  weak  natural 
memory,  learn  to  bring  forth  from  their  treasury 
things  new  and  old,  with  a  wealth  of  practical 
application  in  those  parts  of  their  spiritual 
addresses  which  are  at  present  generally  the 
most  meagre  and  the  most  vague.  By  political 
students  Aristotle's  "  Politics  "  might  be  ben- 
eficially interleaved  in  the  same  way,  and  the 
mind  thus  preserved  from  that  rigidity  and  one- 
sidedness  which  a  familiarity  with  only  the 
most  modern  and  recent  experience  of  public 
life  is  so  apt  to  engender. 


34  THE  CVLIURE   OF 

IX.  A  most  important  matter,  not  seldom 
neglected  in  the  scholastic  and  academical 
training  of  young  men,  is  the  art  of  polished, 
pleasant,  and  effective  expression.  I  shall 
therefore  offer  a  few  remarks  here  on  the  for- 
mation of  Style,  and  on  Public  Speaking. 
Man  is  naturally  a  speaking  animal  ;  and  a 
good  style  is  merely  that  accomplishment  in 
the  art  of  verbal  expression  which  arises  from 
the  improvement  of  the  natural  faculty  by  good 
training.  The  best  training  for  the  formation 
of  style  is  of  course  familiar  intercourse  with 
good  speakers  and  writers.  A  man's  vocabu- 
lary depends  very  much  always,  and  in  the 
first  stages  perhaps  altogether,  on  the  company 
he  keeps.  Read,  therefore,  the  best  composi- 
tions of  the  most  lofty-minded  and  eloquent 
men,  and  you  will  not  fail  to  catch  something 
of  their  nobility,  only  let  there  be  no  slavish 
imitation  of  any  man's  manner  of  expression. 
There  is  a  certain  individuality  about  every 
man's  style,  as  about  his  features,  which  must 
be  preserved.  Also,  be  not  over  anxious  about 
mere  style,  as  if  it  were  a  thing  that  could  be 
cultivated  independently  of  ideas.  Be  more 
careful  that  you  should  have  something  weighty 
and  pertinent  to  say,  than  that  you  should  say 
things  in  the  most  polished  and  skillful  way 
There  is  good  sense  in  what  Socrates  said  to 


THE  INTELLECT.  35 

the  clever  young  Greeks  in  this  regard,  that  if 
they  had  something  to  say  they  would  know 
how  to  say  it ;  and  to  the  same  effect  spoke 
St.  Paul  to  the  early  Corinthian  Christians, 
and  in  these  last  times  the  wise  Goethe  to  the 
German  students,  — 

"  Be  thine  to  seek  the  honest  gain, 

No  shallow-sounding  fool ; 
Sound  sense  finds  utterance  for  itself) 

Without  the  critic's  rule; 
If  to  your  heart  your  tongue  be  true, 
Why  hunt  for  words  with  much  ado  ?  " 

But  with  this  reservation  you  cannot  be  too 
diligent  in  acquiring  the  habit  of  expressing 
your  thoughts  on  paper  with  that  combination 
of  lucid  order,  graceful  ease,  pregnant  signifi- 
cance, and  rich  variety,  which  marks  a  good 
style.  But  for  well-educated  men,  in  this 
country  at  least,  and  for  normally-constituted 
men  in  all  countries  I  should  say,  writing  is 
only  a  step  to  speaking.  Not  only  professional 
men,  such  as  preachers,  advocates,  and  poli- 
ticians, but  almost  every  man  in  a  free  country, 
may  be  called  upon  occasionally  to  express  his 
sentiments  in  public  ;  and  unless  the  habit  be 
acquired  early,  in  later  years  there  is  apt  to 
be  felt  a  certain  awkwardness  and  difficulty 
in  the  public  utterance  of  thought,  which  is 
not  the  less  real  because  it  is  in  most  cases 
artificial.     The  great   thing  here  is   to  begin 


36  THE  CULTURE  OF 

early»  and  to  avoid  that  slavery  of  the  paper 
which,  as  Plato  foresaw,^  makes  so  many  cul- 
tivated men  in  these  days  less  natural  in  their 
speech,  and  less  eloquent,  than  the  most  un 
tutored  savages.  Young  men  should  train 
themselves  to  marshal  their  ideas  in  good 
order,  and  to  keep  a  firm  grip  of  them  without 
the  help  of  paper.  A  card,  with  a  few  leading 
words  to  catch  the  eye,  may  help  the  memory 
in  the  first  place  ;  but  it  is  better,  as  often  as 
possible,  to  dispense  with  even  this  assistance. 
A  speaker  should  always  look  his  audience 
directly  in  the  face,  which  he  cannot  do  when 
he  is  obliged  to  cast  a  side  glance  into  a  paper. 
In  order  to  acquire  early  this  useful  habit,  I 
need  scarcely  say  that  there  is  no  better  train- 
ing school  than  the  debating  societies  which 
have  long  been  a  strong  point  of  the  Scottish 
universities.  Practice  will  produce  dexterity  ; 
dexterity  will  work  confidence ;  and  the  bash- 
fulness  and  timidity  so  natural  to  a  young  man 
when  first  called  upon  to  address  a  public 
meeting,  so  far  as  it  lames  and  palsies  his 
utterance,  will  disappear  ;  that  it  should  dis- 
appear altogether  is  far  from  necessary.  For- 
wardness and  pertness  are  a  much  more 
serious  fault  in  a  young  speaker  than  a  little 
nervous  bashfulness.  A  public  speaker  shoula 
1  See  the  Phttdrus. 


THE  INTELLECT.  37 

never  wish  to  shake  himself  free  from  that 
feeHng  of  responsibility  which  belongs  to  his 
position  as  one  whose  words  are  meant  to 
influence,  and  ought  to  influence,  the  senti- 
ments of  all  ranks  of  his  fellow  beings  ;  but 
that  this  feeling  of  reverential  respect  for  the 
virtue  of  the  spoken  word  may  not  degenerate 
into  a  morbid  anxiety,  and  a  pale  concern  for 
tame  propriety,  I  would  advise  him  not  to 
think  of  himself  at  all,  but  to  go  to  the  pulpit 
or  platform  with  a  thorough  command  of  his 
subject,  with  an  earnest  desire  to  do  some 
good  by  his  talk,  and  to  trust  to  God  for  the 
utterance.  Of  course  this  does  not  imply  that 
in  respect  of  distinct  and  effective  utterance 
a  man  has  nothing  to  learn  from  a  professed 
master  of  elocution  ;  it  is  only  meant  that 
mere  intelligible  speaking  is  a  natural  thing, 
about  which  no  special  anxiety  is  to  be  felt. 
Accomplished  speaking,  like  marching  or  dan- 
cing, is  an  art,  for  the  exercise  of  which,  in 
many  cases,  a  special  training  is  necessary. 

X.  I  said  under  the  first  head  that  the  foun- 
tains of  true  wisdom  are  not  books  ;  neverthe- 
less, in  the  present  stage  of  society,  books  play, 
and  must  continue  to  play,  a  great  part  in  the 
training  of  young  minds  ;  and  therefore  I  shall 
taere  set  down  some  points  in  detail  with  regard 


38  THE  CULTURE  OF 

to  the  chqicej^and  the  use. of  Books.  Keep  in 
mind,  in  the  first  place,  that  though  the  library 
shelves  groan  with  books,  whose  name  is  legion, 
there  are  in  each  department  only  a  few  great 
books,  in  relation  to  which  others  are  but  aux- 
iliary, or  it  may  be  sometimes  parasitical,  and, 
like  the  ivy,  doing  harm  rather  than  good  to 
the  bole  round  which  they  cling.  How  many 
thousands,  for  instance,  and  tens  of  thousands, 
of  books  on  Christian  theology  have  been  writ- 
ten and  published  in  the  world  since  the  first 
preaching  of  the  Gospel,  which,  of  course  con- 
tain nothing  more  and  nothing  better  than  the 
Gospel  itself,  and  which,  if  they  were  all  burnt 
to-morrow,  would  leave  Christianity  in  the 
main,  nothing  the  worse,  and  in  some  points 
essentially  the  better.  There  is  fully  as  much 
nonsense  as  sense  in  many  learned  books  that 
have  made  a  noise  in  their  day  ;  and  in  most 
books  there  is  a  great  deal  of  superfluous  and 
useless  talk.  Stick  therefore  to  the  great  books, 
the  original  books,  the  fountain-heads  of  great 
ideas  and  noble  passions,  and  you  will  learn 
joyfully  to  dispense  with  the  volumes  of  acces- 
sory talk  by  which  their  virtue  has  been  as  fre- 
quently obscured  as  illuminated.  For  a  young 
theologian  it  is  of  far  greater  importance  that 
he  should  have  the  Greek  New  Testament  by 
heart  than  that  he  should  be  able  to  talk  glibly 


THE  INTELLECT.  39 

about  the  last  volume  of  sermons  by  Dr.  Kerr 
or  Stopford  Brooke,  All  these  are  very  well, 
but  they  are  not  the  one  thing  needful  ;  for  the 
highest  Christian  culture  they  may  lightly  be 
dispensed  with.  Not  so  the  Bible.  Fix  there- 
fore in  your  eye  the  great  books  on  which  the 
history  of  human  thought  and  the  changes  of 
human  fortunes  have  turned.  In  politics  look 
to  Aristotle  ;  in  mathematics  to  Newton  ;  in 
philosophy  to  Leibnitz  ;  in  theology  to  Cud- 
worth  ;  in  poetry  to  Shakspeare  ;  in  science  to 
Faraday.  Cast  a  firm  glance  also  on  those 
notable  men,  who,  though  not  achieving  any 
valuable  positive  results  of  speculation,  were 
useful  in  their  day,  as  protesting  against  wide- 
spread popular  error,  and  rousing  people  into 
trains  of  more  consistent  thinking  and  acting. 
To  this  class  of  men  belonged  Voltaire  amongst 
the  French,  and  David  Hume  in  our  country. 
But,  of  course,  while  you  covet  earnestly  a 
familiar  acquaintance  with  all  such  original 
thinkers  and  discoverers  in  the  world  of  thought 
and  action,  you  will  feel  only  too  painfully  that 
you  cannot  always  lay  hold  of  them  in  the  first 
stage  of  your  studies  ;  you  will  require  steps  to 
mount  up  to  shake  hands  with  these  Celestials  ; 
and  these  steps  are  little  oooks.  Do  not  there- 
fore despise  little  books  ;  they  are  for  you  the 
necessary  lines  of  approach  to  the  great  fortress 


40  THE  CULTURE  OF 

of  knowledge,  and  cannot  safely  be  overleapt* 
On  the  contrary,  take  a  little  grammar,  for  in- 
stance, when  learning  a  language,  rather  than 
a  big  one ;  and  learn  the  fundamental  things, 
the  anatomy,  the  bones  and  solid  framework, 
with  strict  accuracy,  before  plunging  into  the 
complex  tissue  of  the  living  physiology.  This 
may  appear  harsh  at  first,  but  will  save  you 
trouble  afterwards.  But,  while  you  learn  your 
little  book  thoroughly,  you  must  beware  of 
reading  it  by  the  method  of  mere  Cram.  Some 
things,  no  doubt,  there  are  that  must  be  appro- 
priated by  the  process  of  cram  ;  but  these  are 
not  the  best  things,  and  they  contain  no  culture. 
Cram  is  a  mere  mechanical  operation,  of  which 
a  reasoning  animal  should  be  ashamed.  But 
cramming,  however  often  practised,  is  seldom 
necessary  ;  it  is  resorted  to  by  those  specially 
who  cannot,  or  who  will  not,  learn  to  think.  I 
advise  you,  on  the  contrary,  whenever  possible, 
to  think  before  you  read,  or  at  least  while  you 
are  reading.  If  you  can  find  out  for  yourself 
by  a  little  puzzling  why  the  three  angles  of  a 
triangle  not  only  are,  but,  in  the  very  nature  of 
the  thing  must  be,  equal  to  two  right  angles, 
you  will  have  done  more  good  to  your  reason 
ing  powers  than  if  you  had  got  the  demonstr* 
tions  of  the  whole  twelve  books  of  Euclid  by 
heart  according  to  the  method  of  cram.     Th^ 


THE  INTELLECT.  41 

next  advice  I  give  you  with  regard  to  books  is 
that  you  should  read  as  much  as  possible  sys- 
tematically and  chronologically.  Without  order 
things  will  not  hang  together  in  the  mind,  and 
the  most  natural  and  instructive  order  is  the 
order  of  genesis  and  growth.  Read  Plutarch's 
great  Lives,  for  instance,  from  Theseus  down 
to  Cleomenes  and  Aratus,  in  chronological  se- 
quence, and  you  will  have  a  much  more  vital 
sort  of  Greek  history  in  your  memory  than 
either  Thirlwall  or  Grote  can  supply.  But  of 
course  neither  this  nor  any  other  rule  can  be 
applied  in  all  cases  without  exception.  The  ex- 
ception to  systematic  reading  is  made  by  pre- 
dilection. If  you  feel  a  strong  natural  tendency 
towards  acquainting  yourself  with  any  particu- 
lar period  of  history,  by  all  means  make  that 
acquaintance  ;  only  do  it  accurately  and  thor- 
oughly. One  link  in  the  chain  firmly  laid  hold 
of,  will  by  and  by  through  natural  connec- 
tion lead  to  others.  As  you  advance  from  fa- 
vorite point  to  point,  you  will  find  the  neces- 
sity of  binding  them  together  by  some  strict 
chronological  sequence.  For  general  informa- 
tion a  sort  of  random  reading  may  be  allowed 
occasionally ;  but  this  sort  of  thing  has  to  do 
only  with  the  necessary  recreation  or  the  useful 
furnishing  of  the  mind,  and  is  utterly  destitute 
of  training  virtue  ;  and  such  reading,  to  which 


42  THE  CULTURE  OF 

there  is  great  temptation  in  these  times,  i^ 
rather  prejudicial  than  advantageous  to  the 
mind.  The  great  scholars  of  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries  had  not  so  many  books 
as  we  have,  but  what  they  had  they  made  a 
grand  use  of.  Reading,  in  the  case  of  mere 
miscellaneous  readers,  is  like  the  racing  of  some 
little  dog  about  the  moor,  snuffing  everything 
and  catching  nothing  ;  but  a  reader  of  the  right 
sort  finds  his  prototype  in  Jacob,  who  wrestled 
with  an  angel  all  night,  and  counted  himself 
the  better  for  the  bout,  though  the  sinew  of  his 
thigh  shrank  in  consequence. 

XT  A  few  remarks  may  be  useful  on  strictly 
Professional  Reading,  as  opposed  to  reading 
with  the  view  of  general  culture.  There  is  a 
natural  eagerness  among  young  men  to  com- 
mence without  delay  their  special  professional 
work  —  what  the  Germans  very  significantly 
call  Brodstiidien  ;  but  there  cannot  be  a  doubt 
that  in  the  unqualified  way  that  young  men 
take  up  this  notion,  it  is  a  great  mistake,  as  the 
experience  of  professional  men  and  the  history 
of  professional  eminence  has  largely  proved. 
For,  in  the  first  place,  a  little  reflection  will 
teach  a  thoughtful  youth,  that  what  in  his 
present  stage  he  may  be  disposed  to  regara 
as  useless    ornaments,  or  even    incumbrances 


THE  INTELLECT.  43 

are  often  the  most  valuable  aids  and  the  most 
serviceable  tools  to  his  future  professional  ac- 
tivity. This  is  peculiarly  the  case  with  lan- 
guages, which  seem  in  the  first  place  to  stand 
in  the  way  of  a  firm  grasp  of  things,  but  which 
become  more  necessary  to  a  man  the  more  he 
extends  the  range  and  fastens  the  roots  of  his 
professional  knowledge.  If  languages  have  been 
often  overvalued,  it  is  only  when  they  have  been 
looked  on  as  an  end  in  themselves.  Their  value 
as  tools,  in  the  hands  of  an  intelligent  thinker, 
can  scarcely  be  overrated.  Again,  the  merely 
professional  man  is  always  a  narrow  man  ;  worse 
than  that,  he  is  in  a  sense  an  artificial  man,  a 
creature  of  technicalities  and  specialties,  re- 
moved equally  from  the  broad  truth  of  nature 
and  from  the  healthy  influence  of  human  con- 
verse. In  society  the  most  accomplished  man 
of  mere  professional  skill  is  often  a  nullity  ;  he 
has  sunk  his  humanity  in  his  dexterity  ;  he  is  a 
leather-dealer,  and  can  talk  only  about  leather  ; 
a  student,  and  smells  fustily  of  books,  as  an  in- 
veterate smoker  does  of  tobacco.  So  far  from 
rushing  hastily  into  merely  professional  studies, 
a  young  man  should  rather  be  anxious  to  avoid 
the  engrossing  influence  of  what  is  popularly 
called  Shop.  He  will  soon  enough  learn  to 
know  the  cramping  influence  of  purely  profes- 


44  THE  CULTURE  OF 

Bional  occupation.  Let  him  flap  his  wings  lus* 
tily  in  an  ampler  region  while  he  may  ; 

"  Der  Jiingling  soil  die  Fliigcl  regen 
In  Lieb  und  Hass  gewaltig  sich  bewegen." 

But  if  a  man  will  fix  his  mind  on  merely  pro- 
fessional study,  and  can  find  no  room  for  gen* 
eral  culture  in  his  soul,  let  him  be  told  that 
no  professional  studies,  however  complete,  can 
teach  a  man  the  whole  of  his  profession  ;  that 
the  most  exact  professional  drill  will  omit  to 
teach  him  the  most  interesting  and  the  most 
important  part  of  his  own  business  —  that  part, 
namely,  where  the  specialty  of  the  profession 
comes  directly  into  contact  with  the  generality 
of  human  notions  and  human  sympathies.  Of 
this  the  profession  of  the  law  furnishes  an  ex- 
cellent example  :  for,  while  there  is  no  art  more 
technical,  more  artificial,  and  more  removed 
from  a  fellow-feeling  of  humanity,  than  law  in 
many  of  its  branches,  in  others  it  marches  out 
into  the  grand  arena  of  human  rights  and  lib- 
erties, and  deals  with  large  questions,  in  the 
handling  of  which  it  is  often  of  more  conse- 
quence that  a  pleader  should  be  a  complete 
man  than  that  he  should  be  an  expert  lawyer. 
In  the  same  way,  medicine  has  as  much  to  do 
with  a  knowledge  of  human  nature  and  of  the 
human  soul  as  with  the  virtues  of  cunningly 
mingled  drugs,  and  the  revelations  of  a  techni 


THE  INTELLECT.  4) 

jal  diagnosis  ;  and  theology  is  generally  then 
least  human  and  least  evangelical  when  it  is 
most  stifly  orthodox  and  most  nicely  profes- 
sional. Universal  experience,  accordingly,  has 
proved  that  the  general  scholar,  however  ap- 
parently inferior  at  the  first  start,  wiHj  in  the 
long  run,  beat  the  special  man  on  his  own  fa- 
vorite ground  ;  for  the  special  man,  from  the 
small  field  of  his  habitual  survey,  can  neither 
know  the  principles  on  which  his  practice  rests, 
nor  the  relation  of  his  own  particular  art  to 
general  human  interests  and  general  human 
intelligence.  The  best  preservatives  against 
the  cramping  force  of  merely  professional  study 
are  to  be  found  in  the  healthy  influences  of  so- 
ciety, in  travel,  and  in  cultivating  a  familiarity 
with  the  great  writers — specially  poets  and 
historians  —  whose  purely  human  thoughts 
"  make  rich  the  blood  of  the  world,"  and  en- 
large the  platform  of  sympathetic  intelligence. 

XII.  I  will  conclude  this  chapter  of  intel- 
lectual culture  with  some  remarks  on  a  subject 
with  regard  to  which,  considering  my  profes- 
sional position,  people  will  naturally  be  inclined 
to  expect,  and  willing  to  receive  advice  from  me 
—  I  mean  the  study  of  Languages.  The  short 
rules  which  I  will  set  down  in  what  appears  to 
me  their  order  of  natural  succession,  are  the 


i^ 


46  THE  CULTURE  OF 

result  of  many  years'  experience,  and  may  be 
relied  on  as  being  of  a  strictly  practical  char- 
acter. 

(i.)  If  possible  always  start  with  a  good 
teacher.  He  will  save  you  much  time  by  clear- 
ing away  difficulties  that  might  otherwise  dis- 
courage you,  and  preventing  the  formation  of 
bad  habits  of  enunciation,  which  must  after- 
wards be  unlearned. 

(2.)  The  next  step  is  to  name  aloud,  in  the 
language  to  be  learned,  every  object  which 
meets  your  eye,  c:refully  excluding  the  inter- 
vention of  the  English  :  in  other  words,  think 
and  speak  of  the  objects  about  you  in  the  lan- 
guage you  are  learning  from  the  very  first  hour 
of  your  teaching  ;  and  remember  that  the  lan- 
guage belongs  in  the  first  place  to  your  ear  and 
to  your  tongue,  not  to  your  book  merely  and  to 
your  brain. 

(3.)  Commit  to  memory  the  simplest  and 
most  normal  forms  of  the  declension  of  nouns, 
such  as  the  us  and  a  declension  in  Latin,  and 
the  A  declension  in  Sanskrit. 

(4.)  The  moment  you  have  learned  the  nom- 
inative and  accusative  cases  of  these  nouns  take 
the  first  person  of  the  present  indicative  of  any 
common  verb,  and  pronounce  aloud  some  short 
sentence  according  to  the  rules  of  syntax  be- 
longing to  active  verbs,  as  —  opw  rov  'HAiov,  I se^ 
the  sun. 


THE  INTELLECT.  47 

(5.)  Enlarge  this  practice  by  adding  some 
epithet  to  the  substantive,  declined  according  to 
the  same  noun,  as  —  opoi  tw  Xafxirpw  "HXlup^  /  see 
the  brigJit  siui. 

(6.)  Go  on  in  this  manner  progressively, 
committing  to  memory  the  whole  present  in- 
dicative, past  and  future  indicative,  of  simple 
verbs,  always  making  short  sentences  with 
them,  and  some  appropriate  nouns,  and  al- 
ways thinking  directly  in  the  foreign  language, 
excluding  the  intrusion  of  the  English.  In  this 
essential  element  of  every  rational  system  of 
linguistic  training  there  is  no  real,  but  only  an 
imaginary  difficulty  to  contend  with,  and,  in 
too  many  cases,  the  pertinacity  of  a  perverse 
practice. 

(7.)  When  the  ear  and  tongue  have  acquired 
a  fluent  mastery  of  the  simpler  forms  of  nouns, 
verbs,  and  sentences,  then,  but  not  till  then, 
should  the  scholar  be  led,  by  a  graduated  proc- 
ess, to  the  more  difficult  and  complex  forms. 

(8.)  Let  nothing  be  learned  from  rules  that 
is  not  immediately  illustrated  by  practice  ;  or 
rather,  let  the  rules  be  educed  from  the  prac- 
tice of  ear  and  tongue,  and  let  them  be  as  few 
and  as  comprehensive  as  possible. 

(9.)  Irregularities  of  various  kinds  are  best 
learned  by  practice  as  they  occur  ;  but  some 
anomalies,  as  in  the  conjugation  of  a  few  irreg> 


^  THE  CULTURE  OF 

ular  verbs,  are  of  such  frequent  occurrence,  and 
re  so  necessary  for  progress,  that  they  had 
better  be  learned  specially  by  heart  as  soon  as 
possible.  Of  this  the  verb  to  be,  in  almost  all 
languages,  is  a  familiar  example. 

(lo.)  Let  some  easy  narrative  be  read,  in  the 
first  place,  or  better,  some  familiar  dialogue,  as, 
in  Greek,  Xenophon's  Anabasis  and  Memora- 
bilia, Cebetis  Tabula,  and  Lucian's  Dialogues  ; 
but  reading  must  never  be  allowed,  as  is  so 
generally  the  case,  to  be  practiced  as  a  substi- 
tute for  thinking  and  speaking.  To  counteract 
this  tendency,  the  best  way  is  to  take  objects 
of  natural  history,  or  representations  of  inter- 
esting objects,  and  describe  their  parts  aloud 
in  simple  sentences,  without  the  intervention 
of  the  mother  tongue. 

(ii.)  Let  all  exercises  of  reading  and  de- 
scribing be  repeated  again  and  again  and 
again.  No  book  fit  to  be  read  in  the  early 
stages  of  language-learning  should  be  read  only 
once. 

(i2.)  Let  your  reading,  if  possible,  be  always 
in  sympathy  with  your  intellectual  appetite. 
Let  the  matter  of  the  work  be  interesting,  and 
you  will  make  double  progress.  To  know  some- 
thing of  the  subject  beforehand  will  be  an  im 
mense  help.  For  this  reason,  with  Christians 
who  know  the  Scriptures,  as  we  do  in  Scotland 


THE  INTELLECT  49 

a  translation  of  the  Bible  is  always  one  of  the 
best  books  to  use  in  the  acquisition  of  a  foreign 
tongue. 

(13.)  As  you  read,  note  carefully  the  differ- 
ence between  the  idioms  of  the  strange  lan- 
guage and  those  of  the  mother  tongue  ;  under- 
score these  distinctly  with  pen  or  pencil,  in 
some  thoroughly  idiomatic  translation,  and  after 
a  few  days  translate  back  into  the  original 
tongue  what  you  have  before  you  in  the  Eng- 
lish form. 

(14.)  To  methodize,  and,  if  necessary,  cor- 
rect your  observations,  consult  some  systematic 
grammar  so  long  as  you  may  find  it  profitable. 
But  the  grammar  should,  as  much  as  possible, 
follow  the  practice,  not  precede  it. 

(15.)  Be  not  content  with  that  mere  method- 
ical generalization  of  the  practice  which  you 
find  in  many  grammars,  but  endeavor  always  to 
find  the  principle  of  the  rule,  whether  belong- 
ing to  universal  or  special  grammar. 

(16.)  Study  the  theory  of  language,  the  or- 
ganism of  speech,  and  what  is  called  com- 
parative philology  or  Glossology.  The  princi- 
ples there  revealed  will  enable  you  to  prosecute 
with  a  reasoning  intelligence  a  study  which 
would  otherwise  be  in  a  great  measure  a  la- 
borious exercise  of  arbitrary  memory. 

(17.)  Still,  practice  is  the  main  thing;  lan- 

4 


50  THE   CULTURE  OF 

guage  must,  in  the  first  place,  be  familiar  ;  and 
this  familiarity  can  be  attained  only  by  constant 
reading  and  constant  conversation.  Where  a 
man  has  no  person  to  speak  to  he  may  declaim 
to  himself;  but  the  ear  and  the  tongue  must 
be  trained,  not  the  eye  merely  and  the  under- 
standing. In  reading,  a  man  must  not  confine 
himself  to  standard  works.  He  must  devour 
everything  greedily  that  he  can  lay  his  hands 
on.  He  must  not  merely  get  up  a  book  with 
accurate  precision ;  that  is  all  very  well  as  a 
special  task ;  but  he  must  learn  to  liv'e  largely 
in  the  general  element  of  the  language ;  and 
minute  accuracy  in  details  is  not  to  be  sought 
before  a  fluent  practical  command  of  the  gen- 
eral currency  of  the  language  has  been  at- 
tained. Shakespeare,  for  instance,  ought  to  be 
read  twenty  times  before  a  man  begins  to  oc- 
cupy himself  with  the  various  readings  of  the 
Shakespcrian  text,  or  the  ingenious  conjectures 
of  his  critics. 

(i8.)  Composition,  properly  so  called,  is  the 
culmination  of  the  exercises  of  speaking  and 
reading,  translation  and  re-translation,  which 
we  have  sketched.  In  this  exercise  the  essen- 
tial thing  is  to  write  from  a  model,  not  from 
dictionaries  or  phrase-books.  Choose  an  au- 
ihor  who  is  a  pattern  of  a  particular  style  —  say 
Plato   in  philosophical  dialogue,  or  Lucian  ic 


THE  INTELLECT.  51 

playful  colloquy  —  steal  his  phrases,  and  do 
something  of  the  same  kind  yourself,  directly, 
without  the  intervention  of  the  English.  After 
you  have  acquired  fluency  in  this  way  you  may 
venture  to  put  more  of  yourself  into  the  style, 
and  learn  to  write  the  foreign  tongue  as  grace- 
fully as  Latin  was  written  by  Erasmus,  Wytten- 
bach,  or  Ruhnken.  Translation  from  English 
classics  may  also  be  practiced,  but  not  in  the 
first  place ;  the  ear  must  be  tuned  by  direct 
imitation  of  the  foreign  tongue,  before  the  more 
difficult  art  of  transference  from  the  mother 
tongue  can  be  attempted  with  success. 


ON    PHYSICAL   CULTURE. 


**  The  glory  of  a  young  man  is  his  strength." 

Solomon. 


ON  PHYSICy\L  CULTURE. 


I.  It  is  a  patent  fact,  as  certain  as  anything 
in  mathematics,  that  whatever  exists  must 
have  a  basis  on  which  to  stand,  a  root  from 
which  to  grow,  a  hinge  on  which  to  turn,  a 
something  which,  however  subordinate  in  it- 
self with  reference  to  the  complete  whole,  is 
the  indispensable  point  of  attachment  from 
which  the  existence  of  the  whole  depends.  No 
house  can  be  raised  except  on  a  foundation,  a 
substructure  which  has  no  independent  virtue, 
and  which,  when  it  exists  in  the  greatest  per- 
fection, is  generally  not  visible,  but  rather 
loves  to  hide  itself  in  darkness.  Now  this  is 
exactly  the  sort  of  relation  which  subsists  be- 
tween a  man's  thinking  faculty  and  his  body, 
between  his  mental  activity  and  his  bodily 
health  ;  and  it  is  obvious  that,  if  this  analogy 
be  true,  there  is  nothing  that  a  student  ought 
to  be  more  careful  about  than  the  sound  con- 
dition of  his  flesh  and  blood.  It  is,  however, 
a  well-known  fact  that  the  care  of  their  hcahh, 


56  ON  rrrvsrcAL  culture. 

or,  what  is  the  same  thing,  the  rational  treat- 
ment of  their  own  flesh  and  blood,  is  the  very 
last  things  that  students  seriously  think  of;  and 
the  more  eager  the  student,  the  more  apt  is 
he  to  sin  in  this  respect,  and  to  drive  himself, 
like  an  unsignaled  railway  train,  to  the  very 
brink  of  a  fatal  precipice,  before  he  knows 
where  he  stands.  It  is  wise,  therefore,  to  start 
in  a  studious  life  with  the  assured  conviction 
which  all  experience  warrants,  that  sedentary 
occupations  generally,  and  specially  sedentary 
habits  combined  with  severe  and  persistent 
brain  exercise,  are  more  or  less  unhealthy,  and, 
in  the  case  of  naturally  frail  constitutions,  such 
as  have  frequently  a  tendency  to  fling  them- 
selves into  books,  tend  directly  to  the  enfee- 
bling of  the  faculties  and  the  undermining  of 
the  frame.  After  this  warning  from  an  old 
student,  let  every  man  consider  that  his  blood 
shall  be  on  his  own  head  if  he  neglect  to  use, 
with  a  firm  purpose,  as  much  care  in  the  pres- 
ervation af  his  health  as  any  good  workman 
would  do  in  keeping  his  tools  sharp,  or  any 
good  soldier  in  having  his  powder  dry.  Mean- 
while I  will  jot  down,  under  a  few  heads,  some 
of  the  most  important  practical  suggestions 
with  which  experience  has  furnished  me  in 
this  matter.  ^ 


ON  PHYSICAL  CULTURE.  57 

II.  The  growth  and  vigorous  condition  of 
every  member  of  the  body,  as,  in  fact,  of  every 
function  of  existence  in  the  universe,  depends 
on  Exercise.  All  life  is  an  energizing  or  a 
working ;  absolute  rest  is  found  only  in  the 
grave  ;  and  the  measure  of  a  man's  vitality  is 
the  measure  of  his  working  power.  To  pos- 
sess every  faculty  and  function  of  the  body  in 
harmonious  working  order  is  to  be  healthy  ;  to 
be  healthy,  with  a  high  degree  of  vital  force, 
is  to  be  strong.  A  man  may  be  healthy  with- 
out being  strong  ;  but  all  health  tends,  more 
or  less,  towards  strength,  and  all  disease  is 
weakness.  Now,  any  one  may  see  in  nature, 
that  things  grow  big  simply  by  growing  ;  this 
growth  is  a  constant  and  habitual  exercise  of 
vital  or  vegetative  force,  and  whatever  checks 
or  diminishes  the  action  of  this  force  —  say, 
harsh  winds  or  frost  —  will  stop  the  growth 
and  stunt  the  production.  Let  the  student 
therefore  bear  in  mind,  that  sitting  on  a  chair, 
leaning  over  a  desk,  poring  over  a  book,  can- 
not possibly  be  the  way  to  make  his  body 
grow.  The  blood  can  be  made  to  flow,  and 
the  muscles  to  play  freely,  only  by  exercise ; 
and,  if  that  exercise  is  not  taken.  Nature  will 
not  be  mocked.  Every  young  student  ought 
Ko  make  a  sacred  resolution  to  move  about  m 
the  open  air  at  least  two  hours  every  day      If 


58  ON  PHYSICAL   CULTimE. 

he  docs  not  do  this,  cold  feet,  the  clogging  of 
the  wheels  of  the  internal  parts  of  the  fleshly 
frame,  and  various  shades  of  stomachic  and 
cerebral  discomfort,  will  not  fail  in  due  season 
to  inform  him  that  he  has  been  sinning  against 
Nature,  and,  if  he  does  not  amend  his  courses, 
as  a  bad  boy  he  will  certainly  be  flogged  ;  for 
Nature  is  never,  like  some  soft-hearted  human 
masters,  over  merciful  in  her  treatment.  But 
why  shoul  a  student  indulge  so  much  in  the 
lazy  and  unhealthy  habit  of  sitting  ?  A  man 
may  think  as  well  standing  as  sitting,  often 
not  a  little  better ;  and  as  for  reading  in  these 
days,  when  the  most  weighty  books  may  be 
had  cheaply,  in  the  lightest  form,  there  is  no 
necessity  why  a  person  should  be  bending  his 
back,  and  doubling  his  chest,  merely  because 
he  happens  to  have  a  book  in  his  hand.  A 
man  will  read  a  play  or  a  poem  far  more  natu- 
rally and  effectively  v/hile  walking  up  and 
down  the  room,  than  when  sitting  sleepily  in 
a  chair.  Sitting,  in  fact,  is  a  slovenly  habit, 
and  ought  not  to  be  indulged.  But  when  a 
man  does  sit,  or  must  sit,  let  him  at  all  events 
sit  erect,  with  his  back  to  the  light,  and  a  full 
free  projection  of  the  breast.  Also,  when 
studying  languages,  or  reading  fine  passages 
of  poetry,  let  him  read  as  much  as  possible 
aloud ;    a  practice    recommended  by  Clemena 


ON  PHYSICAL   CULTURE.  59 

of  Alexandria,-^  and  which  will  have  the  double 
good  effect  of  strengthening  that  most  im- 
portant vital  element  the  lungs,  and  training 
the  ear  to  the  perception  of  vocal  distinc- 
tions, so  stupidly  neglected  in  many  of  our 
public  schools.  There  is,  in  fact,  no  necessary 
connection,  in  most  cases,  between  the  knowl- 
edge which  a  student  is  anxious  to  acquire, 
and  the  sedentary  habits  which  students  are 
so  apt  to  cultivate.  A  certain  part  of  his 
work,  no  doubt,  must  be  done  amid  books  ; 
but  if  I  wish  to  know  Homer,  for  instance, 
thoroughly,  after  the  first  grammatical  and 
lexicographical  drudgery  is  over,  I  can  read 
him  as  well  on  the  top  of  Ben  Cruachan,  or, 
if  the  day  be  blasty,  amid  the  grand  silver 
pines  at  Inverawe,  as  in  a  fusty  study.  A 
man's  enjoyment  of  an  ^schylean  drama  or 
a  Platonic  dialogue  will  not  be  diminished, 
but  sensibly  increased,  by  the  fragrant  breath 
of  birches  blowing  around  him,  or  the  sound 
of  mighty  waters  rushing  near.  As  for  a  lexi- 
con, if  you  make  yourself  at  the  first  reading 
a  short  index  of  the  more  difficult  words,  you 
can  manage  the  second  reading  more  comfort- 
ably without  it.  What  a  student  should  spe- 
cially see  to,  both  in  respect  of  health  and  of 

^  TToAXoTs  5«  ia&  8t«  koI  rb  "yi-y^iivb* 
T^s  ofayvcitretos  •yvfj.va.ai6v  iariv.  —  Padagog^  iii.  lO. 


60  ON  PHYSICAL   CULTURE. 

good  taste,  is  not  to  carry  the  breath  of  books 
with  him  wherever  he  goes,  as  some  people 
carry  the  odor  of  tobacco.  To  prevent  this 
contagion  of  bookishness,  the  best  thing  a 
young  man  can  do  is  to  join  a  volunteer  corps, 
the  drill  connected  with  which  will  serve  the 
double  purpose  of  brushing  off  all  taint  of 
pedantry,  and  girding  the  loins  stoutly  for  all 
the  duties  that  belong  to  citizenship  and  ac- 
tive manhood.  The  modern  Prussians,  like 
the  ancient  Greeks,  understand  the  value  of 
military  drill,  and  make  every  man  serve  his 
time  in  the  army  ;  but  we  rush  prematurely 
into  the  shop,  and  our  citizenship  and  our 
manhood  suffer  accordingly.  The  cheapness 
of  railway  and  steamboat  travelling,  also,  in 
the  present  day,  renders  inexcusable  the  con- 
duct of  the  studious  youth  who  will  sit,  week 
after  week,  and  month  after  month,  chained 
to  a  dull  gray  book,  when  he  might  inhale 
much  more  healthy  imaginings  from  the  \4vid 
face  of  nature  in  some  green  glen  or  remote 
wave-plashed  isle.  A  book,  of  course,  may 
always  be  in  his  pocket,  if  a  book  be  neces- 
sary ;  but  it  is  better  to  cultivate  independence 
of  these  paper  helps,  as  often  as  may  be,  to 
learn  directly  from  observation  of  nature,  and 
to  sit  in  a  frame  of  "  wise  passiveness,"  grow- 
ing insensibly  in  strong  thought  and  feeling 


ON  PHYSICAL   CULTURE.  6 1 

by  the  breezy  influences  of  Nature  playing 
about  us.  But  it  is  not  necessary  that  a  man 
should  be  given  to  indulge  in  Words  worth  ian 
musings,  before  the  modern  habits  of  travel- 
ling and  touring  can  be  made  to  subserve  the 
double  end  of  health  and  culture.  Geology, 
Botany,  Zoology,  and  all  branches  of  Natural 
History,  are  best  studied  in  the  open  air  ;  and 
their  successful  cultivation  necessarily  implies 
the  practice  of  those  habits  of  active  and  en- 
terprising pedestrianism,  which  are  such  a  fine 
school  of  independent  manhood.  History  also 
and  archaeology  are  most  aptly  studied  in  the 
storied  glen,  the  ruined  abbey,  or  the  stout  old 
border  tower ;  and  in  fact,  in  an  age  when  the 
whole  world  is  more  or  less  locomotive,  the 
student  who  stays  at  home,  and  learns  in  a 
gray  way  only  from  books,  in  addition  to  the 
prospect  of  dragging  through  life  with  enfee- 
bled health,  and  dropping  into  a  premature 
grave,  must  make  up  his  mind  to  be  looked 
on  by  all  well-conditioned  persons  as  a  weak- 
ling and  c.n  oddity. 

For  keeping  the  machine  of  the  body  in  a 
5ne  poise  of  flexibility  and  firmness,  nothing 
deserves  a  higher  place  than  Games  and  Gym- 
nastics. A  regular  constitutional  walk,  as  it 
IS  called,  before  dinner,  as  practiced  by  many 
persons,  has  no  doubt  something  formal  about 


52  ON  PHYSICAL   CULTURE. 

it,  which  not  everybody  knows  to  season  with 
pleasantness  :  to  those  who  feel  the  pressure  of 
such  formality,  athletic  games  supply  the  nec- 
essary exercise  along  with  a  healthy  social 
stimulus.  For  boys  and  young  men,  cricket; 
for  persons  of  a  quiet  temperament,  and  staid 
old  bachelors,  bowls  ;  for  all  persons  and  all 
ages,  the  breezy  Scottish  game  of  golf  is  to 
be  commended.  Boating  of  course,  when  not 
overdone,  as  it  sometimes  is  in  Oxford  and 
Cambridge,  is  a  manly  and  characteristically 
British  exercise  ;  and  the  delicate  management 
of  sail  and  rudder  as  practiced  in  the  Shetland 
and  Hebridean  seas,  is  an  art  which  calls  into 
play  all  the  powers  that  belong  to  a  prompt 
and  vigorous  manhood.  Angling,  again,  is 
favorable  to  musing  and  poetic  imaginings,  as 
the  examples  of  Walton  and  Stoddart,  and 
glorious  John  Wilson,  largely  show  ;  in  rainy 
weather  billiards  is  out  of  sight  the  best  game  ; 
in  it  there  is  developed  a  quickness  of  eye,  an 
expertness  of  touch,  and  a  subtlety  of  calcu- 
lation, truly  admirable.  In  comparison  with 
this  cards  are  stupid,  which,  at  best,  in  whist, 
only  exercise  the  memory,  while  chess  can 
scarcely  be  called  an  amusement  ;  it  is  a  study, 
and  a  severe  brain  exercise,  which  for  a  man 
of  desultory  mental  activity  may  have  a  brac- 
ing virtue,  but  to  a  systematic  thinker  can 
jcarcely  act  as  a  relief 


ON  PHYSICAL   CULTURE.  63 

III.  Let  me  now  make  a  few  remarks  on 
the  very  vulgar,  but  by  no  means  always  wisely 
managed  process  of  Eating  and  Drinking. 
Abernethy  was  wont  to  say  that  the  two  great 
killing  powers  in  the  world  are  Stuff  and 
Fret.  Of  these  the  former  certainly  has  noth- 
ing to  do  with  the  premature  decay  of  Scot- 
tish students  ;  they  die  rather  of  eating  too 
little  than  of  eating  too  much.  Of  course  it  is 
necessary,  in  the  first  place,  that  you  should 
have  something  to  eat,  and,  in  the  second  place, 
that  what  you  eat  should  be  substantial  and 
nourishing.  With  regard  to  the  details  of  this 
matter  you  must  consult  the  doctor  ;  but  I 
believe  it  is  universally  agreed  that  the  plainest 
food  is  often  the  best ;  and  for  the  highest 
cerebral  and  sanguineous  purposes,  Igng  ex- 
perience has  proved  that  there  is  nothing  better 
than  oatmeal  and  good  pottage.  For  as  the 
poet  says  — 

/  "  Buirdly  chiels  and  clever  hizzies    \ 
Are  bred  in  sic  a  way  as  this  is." 

Supposing,  however,  that  the  supply  of  good 
nourishment  is  adequate,  people  are  apt  to  erf 
in  various  ways  when  they  come  to  use  it. 
There  is  a  class  of  people  who  do  not  walk 
through  life,  but  race  ;  they  do  not  know  what 
it  is  to  sit  down  to  anything  with  a  quiet  pur- 
pose, and  so  they  bolt  their  dinner  with  a  gal- 


64  ON  PHYSICAL   CULTURE. 

loping  purpose  to  be  done  with  it  as  soon  as 
possible.  This  is  bad  policy  and  bad  philoso- 
phy. The  man  who  eats  in  a  hurry  loses  both 
the  pleasure  of  eating  and  the  profit  of  diges- 
tion. If  men  of  business  in  bustling  cities, 
and  Americans  who  live  in  a  constant  fever  of 
democratic  excitement,  are  apt  to  indulge  in 
this  unhealthy  habit,  students  and  bookish  men 
are  not  free  from  the  same  temptation.  Eager 
readers  will  not  only  bolt  their  dinner  that  they 
may  get  to  their  books,  but  they  will  read  some- 
times even  while  they  are  eating  ;  thus  forcing 
nature  to  act  from  two  distinct  vital  centres  at 
the  same  time  —  the  brain  and  the  stomach  — 
of  which  the  necessary  result  is  to  enfeeble 
both.  To  sip  a  cup  of  tea  with  Lucian  or 
Aristophanes  in  one  hand  may  be  both  pleasant 
and  profitable  ;  but  dinner  is  a  more  serious 
affair,  and  must  be  gone  about  with  a  devotion 
of  the  whole  man  —  toUis  in  illis,  "  a  whole 
man  to  one  thing  at  one  time,"  as  Chancellor 
Thurlow  said,  —  seasoned  very  properly,  with 
agreeable  conversation  or  a  little  cheerful  music, 
where  you  can  have  it,  but  never  mingle^  w'ith 
severe  cogitations  or  perplexing  problems.  In 
this  view  the  custom  of  the  English  and  Ger 
man  students  of  dining  with  one  another,  is 
much  to  be  commended  before  the  solitary 
feeding   too    often   practiced  by  poor  Scottish 


ON  PHYSICAL   CULTURE.  65 

Students  in  lonely  lodging  houses.  In  this 
matter  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland,  among 
its  other  notable  achievements,  has  recently 
shown  us  an  example  well  worthy  of  imitation. 
They  have  instituted  a  dining  hall  for  their 
theological  students,  distinguished  by  salubrity, 
cheapness,  and  sociality.  Next  to  quality,  a 
certain  variety  of  food  is  by  all  means  to  be 
sought  after.  The  stimulus  of  novelty  that 
goes  along  with  variety,  sharpens  appetite ; 
besides  that  Nature,  in  all  her  rich  and  beau- 
tiful ways,  emphatically  protests  against  mo- 
notony. It  is,  moreover,  a  point  of  practical 
wisdom  to  prevent  the  stomach  from  becoming 
the  habituated  slave  of  any  kind  of  food.  In 
change  of  circumstances  the  favorite  diet  can- 
not always  be  had  ;  and  so,  to  keep  himself  in 
a  state  of  alimentary  comfort,  your  methodical 
eater  must  restrict  his  habits  of  locomotion, 
and  narrow  the  range  of  his  existence  to  a 
fixed  sphere  where  he  can  be  fed  regularly  with 
his  meted  portion.  As  for  drink,  I  need  not 
say  that  a  glass  of  good  beer  or  wine  is  always 
pleasant,  and  in  certain  cases  may  even  be 
necessary  to  stimulate  digestion  ;  but  healthy 
young  men  can  never  require  such  stimulus  ; 
and  the  more  money  that  a  poor  Scotch  stu- 
dent can  spare  from  unnecessary  and  slippery 
luxuries,  such  as  drink  and  tobacco,  so  much 
5 


66  ON  rilYSICAL   CULTURE. 

the  better.  "  Honest  water  "  certainly  has  this 
merit,  that  it  "  never  made  any  man  a  sinner  ;  ** 
and  of  whisky  it  may  be  said  that,  however 
beneficial  it  may  be  on  a  wet  moor  or  on 
the  top  of  a  frosty  Ben  in  the  Highlands,  when 
indulged  in  habitually  it  never  made  any  man 
either  fair  or  fat.  He  who  abstains  from  it 
altogether  will  never  die  in  a  ditch,  and  will 
always  find  a  penny  in  his  pocket  to  help  him- 
self and  his  friend  in  an  emergency. 

IV.  I  believe  there  are  few  things  more 
necessary  than  to  warn  students  against  the 
evil  effects  of  close  rooms  and  bad  ventilation. 
Impure  air  can  never  make  pure  blood  ;  and 
impure  blood  corrupts  the  whole  system.  But 
the  evil  is,  that,  no  immediate  sensible  effects 
being  produced  from  a  considerable  amount 
of  impurity  in  the  air,  thoughtless  and  careless 
persons  —  that  is,  I  am  afraid,  the  great  majority 
of  persons  —  go  on  inhaling  it  without  receiv- 
ing any  hint  that  they  are  imbibing  poison. 
But  those  evils  are  alwavs  the  most  dangerous 
of  which  the  approaches  are  the  most  insidious. 
Let  students,  therefore,  who  are  often  confined 
in  small  rooms,  be  careful  to  throw  open  their 
windows  whenever  they  go  out ;  and,  if  the 
windows  of  their  sleeping-room  are  so  situated 
that  they  can  be  kept  open  without  sending  9 


ON  PHYSICAL   CULTURE.  6 J 

draught  of  air  directly  across  the  sleeper,  let 
them  by  all  means  be  left  open  night  and  day, 
both  summer  and  winter.  In  breezy  Scotland 
at  least,  this  practice,  except  in  the  case  of 
very  sensitive  subjects,  can  only  be  beneficial. 
In  hot  countries,  where  insalubrious  vapors 
in  some  places  infest  the  night,  it  may  be 
otherwise. 

V.  Should  it  be  necessary  to  say  a  word 
about  Sleep  1  One  would  think  not.  Nature, 
we  may  imagine,  is  sufficient  for  herself  in  this 
matter.  Let  a  man  sleep  when  he  is  sleepy,  and 
rise  when  the  crow  of  the  cock,  or  the  glare  of 
the  sun,  rouses  him  from  his  torpor.  Exactly 
so,  if  Nature  always  got  fair  play  ;  but  she  is 
swindled  and  flouted  in  so  many  ways  by  human 
beings,  that  a  general  reference  to  her  often 
becomes  a  useless  generality.  In  the  matter  of 
sleep  specially  students  are  great  sinners  ;  nay, 
their  very  profession  is  a  sin  against  repose ; 
and  the  strictest  prophylactic  measures  are 
necessary  to  prevent  certain  poaching  practices 
of  thinking  men  into  the  sacred  domain  of 
sleep.  Cerebral  excitement,  like  strong  coffee, 
is  the  direct  antagonist  of  sleep  ;  therefore  the 
student  should  so  apportion  his  hours  of  intel- 
lectual task-work,  that  the  more  exciting  and 
stimulating:  brain  exercise  shou.d  never  be  con* 


68  ON  PHYSICAL   CULTURE. 

tinued  direct  into  the  hour  for  repose  ;  but  let 
the  last  work  of  the  day  be  always  something 
comparatively  light  and  easy,  or  dull  and  so- 
porific ;  or  better  still,  let  a  man  walk  for  an 
hour  before  bed,  or  have  a  pleasant  chat  with  a 
chum,  and  then  there  can  be  no  fear  but  that 
Nature,  left  to  herself,  will  find,  without  artifice, 
the  measure  of  rest  which  she  requires.  As  to 
the  exact  amount  of  that  measure  no  rule  can 
be  laid  down  ;  less  than  six,  or  more  than  eight 
hours'  sleep,  according  to  general  experience, 
must  always  be  exceptional.  The  student  who 
walks  at  least  two  hours  every  day,  and  works 
hard  with  his  brain  eight  or  nine  hours  besides, 
will  soon  find  out  what  is  the  natural  measure 
of  sleep  that  he  requires  to  keep  free  from  the 
feverishness  and  the  languor  that  are  the  neces- 
sary consequences  of  prolonged  artificial  wake- 
fulness. As  to  early  rising,  which  makes  such 
a  famous  figure  in  some  notable  biographies,  I 
can  say  little  about  it,  as  it  is  a  virtue  which 
I  was  never  able  to  practice.  There  can  be  no 
doubt,  however,  that,  wherever  it  can  be  prac- 
ticed in  a  natural  and  easy  way,  it  is  a  very 
healthful  practice  ;  and  in  certain  circumstances, 
such  as  those  in  which  the  late  distinguished 
Baron  Bunsen  was  placed,  full  of  various  busi- 
ness and  distraction,  the  morning  hours  seen? 
clearly  to  be  pointed  out  as  the  only  ones  avail 


ON  PHYSICAL   CULTURE.  69 

nble  for  the  purposes  of  learned  research  and 
devout  meditation. 

VI.  On  the  use  of  Baths  and  Water  as  a 
hygienic  instrument  I  can  speak  with  confi- 
dence, as  I  have  frequented  various  celebrated 
hydropathic  institutions,  and  have  carefully 
pondered  both  the  principles  and  the  practice 
of  that  therapeutic  discipline.  Hydropathy  is 
a  name  that  very  inadequately  expresses  the 
virtue  of  the  treatment  to  which  it  subjects  the 
patient.  It  is  a  well-calculated  combination  of 
exercise,  leisure,  diet,  amusement,  society,  and 
water,  applied  in  various  ways  to  stimulate  the 
natural  perspiratory  action  of  the  skin.  Any 
one  may  see  that  the  influences  brought  to  bear 
on  the  bodily  system  by  such  a  combination 
are  in  the  highest  degree  sanitary.  The  im- 
portant point  for  students  is  to  be  informed 
that  parts  of  this  discipline  somewhat  expen- 
sively pursued  in  hydropathic  institutions  under 
the  superintendence  of  experienced  physicians, 
can  be  transferred  safely,  and  at  no  expense,  to 
the  routine  of  their  daily  life.  A  regular  bath 
in  the  morning,  where  water  can  be  had,  un- 
less with  very  feeble  and  delicate  subjects,  has 
always  an  invigorating  effect  ;  but,  where  water 
is  scarce,  a  wet  sheet,  iippec?  in  water,  and 
well  wrung,  will  serve  ths  purpose  equally  well. 


70  ON  PHYSICAL   CULTURE. 

The  body  must  be  altogether  enveloped,  ana 
well  rubbed  with  this  ;  and  then  a  dry  sheet 
used  in  the  same  way  will  cause  a  glow  to 
come  out  in  the  skin,  which  is  the  best  pre- 
ventive against  those  disturbances  of  cuticulaf 
action  which  the  instability  of  our  northern 
climate  render  so  common  and  so  annoying. 
The  wet  sheet  packing,  one  of  the  most  bruited 
of  the  hydropathic  appliances,  and  which  in 
faCs*:  acts  as  a  mild  tepid  blister  swathing  the 
whole  body,  may  be  practiced  for  special  pur- 
poses, under  the  direction  of  a  person  expert 
in  those  matters  ;  but  the  virtue  of  this,  as  of 
all  water  applications,  depends  on  the  power 
of  reaction  which  the  physical  system  possesses. 
This  reaction  young  men  of  good  constitutions, 
trained  by  healthy  exercise  and  exposure,  will 
always  possess  ;  but  persons  of  a  dull  and  slow 
temperament  should  beware  of  making  sudden 
experiments  with  cold  water  without  certain 
precautions  and  directions  from  those  who  are 
more  experienced  than  themselves. 

VII.  What  I  have  further  to  say  about  health 
belongs  to  an  altogether  different  chapter.  A 
man  cannot  be  kept  healthy  merely  by  attend- 
ing to  his  stomach.  If  the  body,  which  is  the 
support  of  the  curiously  complex  fabric,  act? 
with  a  sustaining  influence  on   the  mind,  the 


ON  PHYSICAL   CULTURE.  71 

mind,  which  is  the  impelling  force  of  the  ma 
chine,  may,  like  steam  in  a  steam-engine,  for 
want  of  a  controlling  and  regulative  force,  in  a 
single  fit  of  untempered  expansion,  blow  all  the 
wheels  and  pegs,  and  close  compacted  plates 
of  the  machine,  into  chaos.  No  function  of  the 
body  can  be  safely  performed  for  a  continuance 
without  the  habitual  strong  control  of  a  well- 
disciplined  will.  All  merely  physical  energies 
in  man  have  a  strong  tendency  to  run  riot  into 
fever  and  dissolution  when  divorced  from  the 
superintendence  of  what  Plato  called  Imperial 
mind  (JSaa-LXiKo^  vuv's).  The  music  of  well-regu- 
lated emotions  imparts  its  harmony  to  the 
strings  of  the  physical  machine  ;  and  freedom 
from  the  blind  plunges  of  willfulness  keeps  the 
heart  free  from  those  fierce  and  irregular  beat- 
ings which  wear  out  its  vitality  prematurely. 
Therefore,  if  you  would  be  healthy,  be  good  ; 
and  if  you  would  be  good,  be  wise  ;  and  if  you 
would  be  wise,  be  devout  and  reverent,  for  the 
fear  of  God  is  the  beginning  of  wisdom.  What 
this  means  it  will  be  the  business  of  the  follow- 
ing chapter  to  set  forth. 


ON    MORAL    CULTURE. 

Me'yag  yap  o  dywi/,  fteyas,  ov)(  ooros  Sokci^ 

TO  )(prj(rTOV  ri  KaKov  yev€(x6ai. 

PLATOi 


ON  MORAL  CULTURE. 


I.  We  are  now  come  to  the  most  important 
of  the  three  great  chapters  of  self-culture.  The 
moral  nature  of  man  supplies  him  both  with  the 
motive  and  the  regulative  power,  being  in  fact 
the  governor,  and  lord,  and  legitimate  master 
of  the  whole  machine.  Moral  excellence  is 
therefore  justly  felt  to  be  an  indispensable  ele- 
ment in  all  forms  of  human  greatness.  A  man 
may  be  as  brilliant,  as  clever,  as  strong,  and  as 
broad  as  you  please  ;  and  with  all  this,  if  he  is 
not  good,  he  may  be  a  paltry  fellow ;  and  even 
the  sublime  which  he  seems  to  reach,  in  his 
most  splendid  achievements,  is  only  a  brilliant 
sort  of  badness.  The  first  Napoleon,  in  his 
thunderous  career  over  our  western  world,  was 
a  notable  example  of  superhuman  force  in  a 
human  shape,  without  any  real  human  great- 
ness. It  does  not  apoear  that  he  was  naturally 
what  we  should  call  a  bad  man  ;  but,  devoting 
himself  altogether  to  military  conquest  and  po- 
litical ascendency,  he  had  no  occasion  to  cxer 


76  ON  MORAL   CULTURE. 

cise  any  degree  of  that  highest  excellence 
which  grows  out  of  unselfishness,  and  so,  as  a 
moral  man,  he  lived  and  died  very  poor  and 
very  small.  But  it  is  not  only  conquerors  and 
politicians  that,  from  a  defect  of  the  moral  ele- 
ment, fail  to  achieve  real  greatness.  "  Noth- 
ing," says  Hartley,  "  can  easily  exceed  the  vain- 
glory, self-conceit,  arrogance,  emulation,  and 
envy,  that  are  to  be  found  in  the  eminent  pro- 
fessors of  the  sciences,  mathematics,  natural 
philosophy,  and  even  divinity  itself"  ^  Nor  is 
there  any  reason  to  be  astonished  at  this.  The 
moral  nature,  like  everything  else,  if  it  is  to 
grow  into  any  sort  of  excellence,  demands  a 
special  culture ;  and,  as  our  passions,  by  their 
very  nature,  like  the  winds,  are  not  easy  of  con- 
trol, and  our  actions  are  the  outcome  of  our 
passions,  it  follows  that  moral  excellence  will 
in  no  case  be  an  easy  affair,  and  in  its  highest 
grades  will  be  the  most  arduous,  and,  as  such, 
the  most  noble  achievement  of  a  thoroughly 
accomplished  humanity.  It  was  an  easy  thing 
for  Lord  Byron  to  be  a  great  poet ;  it  was 
merely  indulging  his  nature  ;  he  was  an  eagle, 
and  must  fly  ;  but  to  have  curbed  his  willful  hu- 
mor, soothed  his  fretful  discontent,  and  learned 
to  behave  like  a  reasonable  being  and  a  gentle- 
man, that  was  a  difficult  matter,  which  he  doei 

1  Obitrzatioru  on  Man.     London,  1749.     Vol.  ii.  p.  255. 


ON  MORAL   CULTURE.  77 

not  seem  ever  seriously  to  have  attempted. 
His  life,  therefore,  with  all  his  genius,  and  fits 
of  occasional  sublimity,  was,  on  the  whole,  a 
terrible  failure,  and  a  great  warning  to  all  who 
are  willing  to  take  a  lesson.  Another  flaring 
beacon  of  rock,  on  which  great  wits  are  often 
wrecked  for  want  of  a  little  kindly  culture  of 
unselfishness,  is  Walter  Savage  Landor,  the 
most  finished  master  of  style,  perhaps,  that 
ever  used  the  English  tongue  ;  but  a  person  at 
the  same  time,  so  im{>eriously  willful,  and  so 
majestically  cross-grained,  that,  with  all  his  pol- 
ished style  and  pointed  thought,  he  was  con- 
stantly living  on  the  verge  of  insanity.  Let 
every  one,  therefore,  who  would  not  suffer  ship- 
wreck on  the  great  voyage  of  life,  stamp  seri- 
ously into  his  soul,  before  all  things,  the  great 
truth  of  the  Scripture  text,  —  "  One  thing  is 
NEEDFUL."  Money  is  not  needful ;  power  is 
not  needful ;  cleverness  is  not  needful  ;  fame  is 
not  needful ;  liberty  is  not  needful ;  even  health 
is  not  the  one  thing  needful  :  but  character 
alone  —  a  thoroughly  cultivated  will  —  is  that 
which  can  truly  save  us  ;  and,  if  we  are  not 
saved  in  this  sense,  we  must  certainly  be 
damned.  There  is  no  point  of  indifference  in 
this  matter,  wliere  a  man  can  safcl)  rest,  say- 
ing to  himself.  If  I  don't  get  better,  I  shall  cer- 
tainly not  get  worse.     He  will  unquestionabl} 


78  ON  MORAL   CULTURE. 

get  worse.  The  unselfish  part  of  his  nature, 
if  left  uncultivated,  will,  like  every  other  neg- 
lected function,  tend  to  shrink  into  a  more 
meagre  vitality  and  more  stunted  proportions. 
Let  us  gird  up  our  loins,  therefore,  and  quit 
us  like  men  ;  and,  having  by  the  golden  gift  of 
God  the  glorious  lot  of  living  once  for  all,  let 
us  endeavor  to  live  nobly. 

II.  It  may  be  well,  before  entering  into  any 
detail,  to  indicate,  in  a  single  word,  the  con- 
nection between  morality  and  piety,  which  is 
not  always  correctly  understood.  A  certain 
school  of  British  moralists,  from  Jeremy  Ben- 
tham  downwards,  have  set  themselves  to  tabu- 
late a  scheme  of  morals  without  any  reference 
to  religion,  which,  to  say  the  least  of  it,  is  a 
very  unnatural  sort  of  divorce,  and  a  plain  sign 
of  a  certain  narrowness  and  incompleteness  in 
the  mental  constitution  of  those  who  advocate 
such  views.  No  doubt  a  professor  of  wisdom, 
dke  old  Epicurus,  may  be  a  very  good  man,  as 
the  world  goes,  and  lead  a  very  clean  life,  be- 
lieving that  all  the  grand  mathematical  struct- 
ure of  this  magnificent  universe  is  the  product 
of  a  mere  fortuitous  concourse  of  blind  atoms  ; 
as,  in  these  days,  I  presume,  there  are  few  mora 
>rirtuous  men  than  some  who  talk  of  laws  of 
Nature,  invariable  sequence,  natural  selection 


ON  MORAL   CULTURE.  79 

favorable  conditions,  happy  combination  of  ex- 
ternal circumstances,  and  other  such  reasonless 
phrases  as  may  seem  to  explain  the  frame  of 
the  universe  apart  from  mind.  But  to  a  healthy 
human  feeling  there  must  always  be  something 
very  inadequate,  say  rather  something  abnor- 
mal and  monstrous,  in  this  phasis  of  morality. 
It  is  as  if  a  good  citizen  in  a  monarchy  were  to 
pay  all  the  taxes  conscientiously,  serve  his  time 
in  the  army,  and  fight  the  battles  of  his  coun- 
try bravely,  but  refuse  to  take  off  his  hat  to  the 
queen  when  she  passed.  If  we  did  not  note 
such  a  fellow  altogether  with  a  black  mark,  as 
a  disloyal  and  disaffected  subject,  we  should 
feel  a  good-natured  contempt  for  him,  as  a 
crotchety  person  and  unmannerly.  So  it  is  ex- 
actly with  atheists,  whether  speculative  or  prac- 
tical ;  they  are  mostly  crotchet-mongers  and 
puzzle-brains  ;  fellows  who  spin  silken  ropes 
in  which  to  strangle  themselves  ;  at  most,  mere 
reasoning  machines,  utterly  devoid  of  every 
noble  inspiration,  whose  leaden  intellectual  fir- 
mament has  no  heat  and  no  color,  whose  whole 
nature  is  exhausted  in  fostering  a  prim  self- 
contained  conceit  about  their  petty  knowledges, 
and  who  can,  in  fact,  fasten  their  coarse  feelers 
upon  nothing  but  what  they  can  finger,  and 
classify,  and  tabulate,  and  dissect.  But  there 
Is   something  that  stands  above  all   fingering, 


8o  ON  MORAL   CULTURE. 

all  microscopes,  and  all  curious  diagnosis,  and 
that  is,  simply,  Life  ;  and  life  is  simply  ener- 
gizing Reason,  and  energizing  Reason  is  only 
another  name  for  God.  To  ignore  this  su- 
preme fact  is  to  attempt  to  conceive  the  steam- 
engine  without  the  intellect  of  James  Watt ;  it 
is  to  make  a  map  of  the  aqueducts  that  sup- 
ply a  great  city  with  water,  without  indicating 
the  fountain-head  from  which  they  are  supplied  ; 
it  is  to  stop  short  of  the  one  fact  which  renders 
all  the  other  facts  possible  ;  it  is  to  leave  the 
body  without  the  head.  By  no  means,  there- 
fore, let  a  young  man  satisfy  himself  with  any 
of  those  cold  moral  schemes  of  the  present  age 
of  reaction,  which  piece  together  a  beggarly 
ac  .ount  of  duties  from  external  induction. 
The  fountain  of  all  the  nobler  morality  is 
moral  inspiration  from  within ;  and  the  feeder 
of  this  fountain  is  God. 

III.  I  will  now  specialize  a  few  of  those 
virtues  the  attainment  of  which  should  be  an 
object  of  lofty  ambition  to  young  men  desirous 
of  making  the  most  of  the  divine  gift  of  life. 
Every  season  and  every  occasion  makes  its 
)wn  imperious  demand,  and  presents  its  pecul- 
iar opportunity  of  glorious  victory  or  ignoble 
defeat  in  the  great  battle  of  existence.  Prim- 
roses  grow  only  in   the   spring ;  and   certair 


ON  MORAL  CULTURE.  8 1 

virtues,  if  they  do  not  put  forth  vigorous  shoots 
in  youth,  are  not  likely  to  show  any  luxuriant 
leafage  in  after  age. 

IV,  First,  there  is  Obedience.  There  is  a 
great  talk  in  these  days  about  liberty  ;  and  no 
doubt  liberty  is  a  very  good  thing,  and  highly 
estimated  by  all  healthy  creatures  ;  but  it  is 
necessary  that  we  should  understand  exactly 
what  this  thing  means.  It  means  only  that  in 
the  exercise  of  all  natural  energies,  each  crea- 
ture shall  be  free  from  every  sort  of  conven- 
tional, artificial,  and  painful  restriction.  Such 
liberty  is  unquestionably  an  unqualified  good, 
but  it  does  not  bring  a  man  very  far.  It  fixes 
only  the  starting-point  in  the  race  of  life.  It 
gives  a  man  a  stage  to  play  on,  but  it  says 
nothing  of  the  part  he  has  to  play,  or  of  the 
style  in  which  he  must  play  it.  Beyond  this 
necessary  starting-point,  all  further  action  in 
life,  so  far  from  being  liberty,  is  only  a  series 
of  limitations.  All  regulation  is  limitation  ; 
and  regulation  is  only  another  name  for  rea- 
soned existence.  And,  as  the  regulations  to 
which  men  must  submit  are  not  always  or 
generally  those  which  they  have  willingly  laid 
down  for  themselves,  but  rather  for  the  most 
part  those  which  have  been  laid  down  by  others 
for  the  general  good  of  society,  it  follows,  that 
6 


82  ON  MORAL   CULTURE. 

whosoever  will  be  a  good  member  of  any  social 
system  must  learn,  in  the  first  place,  to  Obey. 
The  law,  the  army,  the  church,  the  state  ser- 
vice, every  field  of  life,  and  every  sphere  of 
action,  are  only  the  embodied  illustrations  of 
this  principle.  Freedom,  of  course,  is  left 
to  the  individual  in  his  own  individual  sphere. 
To  leave  him  no  freedom  were  to  make  him 
a  mere  machine,  and  to  annihilate  his  human- 
ity ;  but,  so  far  as  he  acts  in  a  social  capacity, 
he  cannot  be  free  from  the  limitations  that 
bind  the  whole  into  a  definite  and  consistent 
unity.  He  may  be  at  the  very  top  of  the 
social  ladder,  but,  like  the  Pope  —  servus 
SERVORUM  —  only  the  more  a  slave  for  that. 
The  brain  can  no  more  disown  the  general 
laws  of  the  organism  than  the  foot  can.  The 
royal  obedience  of  each  member  is  at  once 
its  duty  and  its  safety.  St.  Paul,  with  his 
usual  force,  fervor,  and  sagacity,  has  grandly 
illustrated  this  text ;  and  if  you  ever  feel  in- 
clined fretfully  to  kick  against  your  special 
function  in  the  great  social  organism,  I  advise 
you  to  make  a  serious  reading  of  i  Cor.  xii. 
14-31.  Every  random  or  willful  move  is  a 
chink  opened  in  the  door,  which,  if  it  be  taught 
to  gape  wider,  will  in  due  season  let  m  chaos 
The  Roman  historian  records  it  as  a  notable 
trait  in   the    great    Punic   captain's   character 


ON  MORAL    CULTURE.  83 

that  he  knew  equally  well  to  obey  and  te 
command, —  "  Nutiquam  ingenium  idem  ad  res 
diversissimas,  pareiidum  atque  imperanduTn 
kabilius  fuii."  Opposite  things,  no  doubt, 
obedience  and  command  are ;  but  the  one, 
nevertheless,  is  the  best  training-school  for 
the  other  ;  for  he  who  has  been  accustomed 
only  to  command  will  not  know  the  limita- 
tions by  which,  for  its  own  beneficial  exercise, 
all  authority  is  bound.  Let  the  old  Roman 
submission  to  authority  be  cultivated  by  all 
young  men  as  a  virtue  at  once  most  charac- 
teristically social,  and  most  becoming  in  un- 
ripe years.  Let  the  thing  commanded  by  a 
superior  authority  be  done  simply  because  it 
is  commanded,  and  let  it  be  done  with  punc- 
tuaUty.  Nothing  commends  a  young  man  so 
much  to  his  employers  as  accuracy  and  punc- 
tuality in  the  conduct  of  business.  And  no 
wonder.  On  each  man's  exactitude  in  doing 
his  special  best  depends  the  comfortable  and 
easy  going  of  the  whole  machine.  In  the 
complicated  tasks  of  social  life  no  genius  and 
no  talent  can  compensate  for  the  lack  of  obe- 
dience. If  the  clock  goes  fitfully,  nobody 
knows  the  time  of  day  ;  and,  if  your  allotted 
task  is  a  necessary  link  in  the  chain  of  an- 
other man's  work,  you  are  his  clock,  and  he 
ought  to  be  able  to  rely  on  you.     The  great 


84  ON  MORAL   CULTURE. 

est  praise  that  can  be  given  to  the  member 
of  any  association  is  in  these  terms  : —  This 
is  a  jnan  who  always  does  what  is  required 
of  him,  and  who  ahvays  appears  at  the  hour 
when  he  is  expected  to  appear. 

V.  The  next  grand  virtue  which  a  young 
man  should  specially  cultivate  is  Truthful- 
ness. I  believe,  with  Plato,  that  a  lie  is  a 
thing  naturally  hateful  both  to  gods  and  men  ; 
and  young  persons  specially  are  naturally 
truthful  ;  but  fear  and  vanity,  and  various  in- 
fluences, and  interests  affecting  self,  may  check 
and  overgrow  this  instinct,  so  as  to  produce 
a  very  hollow  and  worthless  manhood.  John 
Stuart  Mill,  in  one  of  his  political  pamphlets, 
told  the  working  classes  of  England  that  they 
were  mostly  liars  ;  and  yet  he  paid  them  the 
compliment  of  saying  that  they  were  the  only 
working  class  in  Europe  who  were  inwardly 
ashamed  of  the  baseness  which  they  practiced. 
A  young  man  in  his  first  start  of  life  should 
impress  on  his  mind  strongly  that  he  lives 
in  a  world  of  stern  realities,  where  no  mere 
show  can  permanently  assert  itself  as  sub- 
stance. In  his  presentment  as  a  member  of 
society  he  should  take  a  sacred  care  to  be 
more  than  he  seems,  not  to  seem  more  than 

he  is.     Oi  y^/>  ^okHv  apiOTo^  aW  eirai  Stkeu      Who 


ON  MORAL   CULTURE.  85 

ever  in  any  special  act  is  studious  to  make  an 
outward  show,  to  which  no  inward  substance 
corresponds,  is  acting  a  lie,  which  may  help 
him  out  of  a  difficulty  perhaps  for  the  occa- 
sion, but,  like  silvered  copper,  will  be  found 
out  in  due  season.  Plated  work  will  never 
stand  the  tear  and  wear  of  life  like  the  genu- 
ine metal  ;  believe  this.  What  principally  in- 
duces men  to  act  this  sort  of  social  lie  is, 
with  persons  in  trade,  love  of  gain  ;  but  with 
young  men,  to  whom  I  now  speak,  either  lazi- 
ness, vanity,  or  cowardice ;  and  against  these 
three  besetting  sins,  therefore,  a  young  man 
should  set  a  special  guard.  Lazy  people  are 
never  ready  with  the  right  article  when  it  is 
wanted,  and  accordingly  they  present  a  false 
one,  as  when  a  schoolboy,  when  called  upon 
to  translate  a  passage  from  a  Greek  or  Latin 
author,  reads  from  a  translation  on  the  op- 
posite page.  What  is  this  but  a  lie  .'*  The 
teacher  wishes  to  know  what  you  have  in  your 
brain,  and  you  give  him  what  you  take  from 
a  piece  of  paper,  not  the  produce  of  your 
brain  at  all.  All  flimsy,  shallow,  and  super- 
ficial work,  in  fact,  is  a  Lie,  of  which  a  man 
ought  to  be  ashamed.  Vanity  is  another  pro- 
vocative of  lies.  From  a  desire  to  appear  well 
before  others,  young  men,  who  are  naturally 
'gnorant  and  inexperienced,  will  sometimes  be 


86  ON  MORAL   CULTURE. 

tempted  to  pretend  that  they  know  more  than 
they  actually  do  know,  and  may  thus  get  into 
a  habit  of  dressing  up  their  little  with  the  air 
and  attitude  of  much,  in  such  a  manner  as  to 
convey  a  false  impression  of  their  own  im- 
portance. Let  a  man  learn  as  early  as  pos- 
sible honestly  to  confess  his  ignoranc<^,  and 
he  will  be  a  gainer  by  it  in  the  long  run ; 
otherwise  the  trick  by  which  he  veils  his  ig- 
norance from  others  may  become  a  habit  by 
which  he  conceals  it  from  himself,  and  learns 
to  spend  his  whole  life  in  an  element  of  de- 
lusive show,  to  which  no  reality  corresponds. 
But  it  is  from  deficiency  of  courage  rather 
than  from  the  presence  of  vanity  that  a  young 
man  may  expect  to  be  most  sorely  tried.  Con- 
ceit, which  is  natural  to  youth,  is  sure  to  be 
pruned  down  ;  the  whole  of  society  is  in  a 
state  of  habitual  conspiracy  to  lop  the  over- 
weening self-estimate  of  any  of  its  members  ; 
but  a  little  decent  cowardice  is  always  safe  ; 
and  those  who  begin  life  by  being  afraid  to 
speak  what  they  think,  are  likely  to  end  it  by 
being  afraid  to  think  what  they  wish.  Moral 
courage  is  unquestionably,  if  the  most  manly, 
certainly  the  rarest  of  the  social  virtues.  The 
most  venerated  traditions  and  institutions  of 
society,  and  even  some  of  the  kindliest  and 
most  finely-fibred  aftections,  are  in  not  a  fe\» 


ON  MORAL   CULTURE.  8/ 

cases  arrayed  against  its  exercise  ;  and  in  such 
cases  to  speak  the  truth  boldly  requires  a  com- 
bination of  determination  and  of  tact,  of  which 
not  every  man  is  capable.  Neither,  indeed, 
is  it  desirable  always  to  speak  all  the  truth 
that  a  man  may  happen  to  know  ;  there  is  no 
more  offensive  thing  than  truth,  when  it  runs 
counter  to  certain  great  social  interests,  asso- 
ciations, and  passions  ;  and  offence,  though  it 
must  sometimes  be  given,  ought  never  to  be 
courted.  To  these  matters  the  text  applies, 
"  Be  ye  wise  as  serpents  and  harmless  as 
doves."  Nevertheless  there  are  occasions  when 
a  man  must  speak  boldly  out,  even  at  the  risk 
of  plucking  the  beard  of  fair  authority  some- 
what rudely.  If  he  does  not  do  so  he  is  a 
coward  and  a  poltroon,  and  not  the  less  so 
because  he  has  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine 
lily-livered  followers  at  his  back. 

VI.  I  don't  know  a  better  advice  to  a  young 
man  than  never  to  be  idle.  It  is  one  of 
those  negative  sort  of  precepts  that  impart  no 
motive  force  to  the  will  ;  but  though  negations 
seem  barren  to  keep  out  the  devil  by  a  strong 
bolt,  they  may  prove  in  the  end  not  the  worst 
receipt  for  admitting  the  good  spirit  into  con- 
fidence. A  man  certainly  should  not  circum- 
scribe his    activity  by  any  inflexible  fence  o/ 


88  ON  MORAL   CULTURE. 

rigid  rules  ;  such  a  formal  method  ism  of  con- 
duct springs  from  narrowness,  and  can  only 
end  in  more  narrowness  ;  but  it  is  of  the  utmost 
importance  to  commence  early  with  an  econom- 
ical use  of  time,  and  this  is  only  possible  by 
means  of  order  and  system.  No  young  person 
can  go  far  wrong  who  devotes  a  certain  amount 
of  time  regularly  to  a  definite  course  of  work  ; 
how  much  that  portion  of  time  should  be,  of 
course  depends  on  circumstances  ;  but  let  it, 
at  all  events,  be  filled  up  with  a  prescribed  con- 
tinuity of  something ;  one  hour  a  day  per- 
sistently devoted  to  one  thing,  like  a  small  seed, 
will  yield  a  large  increase  at  the  year's  end. 
Random  activity,  jumping  from  one  thing  to 
another  without  a  plan,  is  little  better,  in  re- 
spect of  any  valuable  intellectual  result,  than 
absolute  idleness.  An  idle  man  is  like  a  house- 
keeper who  keeps  the  doors  open  for  any  burg- 
lar. It  is  a  grand  safeguard  when  a  man  can 
say,  I  have  no  time  for  nonsense  ;  no  call  for 
unreasonable  dissipation  ;  no  need  for  that  sort 
of  stimulus  which  wastes  itself  in  mere  titilla- 
tion  ;  variety  of  occupation  is  my  greatest  pleas- 
ure, and  when  my  task  is  finished  I  know  how 
to  lie  fallow,  and  with  soothing  rest  prepare 
myself  for  another  bout  of  action.  The  best 
preventive  against  idleness  is  to  start  with  the 
deep-seated    conviction    of  the  earnestness   o 


ON  MORAL   CULTURE.  89 

life.  Whatever  men  say  of  the  world,  it  is 
certainly  no  stage  for  trifling ;  in  a  scene  where 
all  are  at  work  idleness  can  lead  only  to  wreck 
and  ruin.  "  Life  is  short,  art  long,  op- 
portunity  FLEETING,   EXPERIMENT    SLIPPERY, 

JUDGMENT  DIFFICULT."  Thcsc  are  the  first 
words  of  the  medical  aphorisms  of  the  wise 
Hippocrates  ;  they  were  set  down  as  a  signif- 
icant sign  at  the  porch  of  the  benevolent  sci- 
ence of  healing  more  than  500  years  before  the 
Christian  era  ;  and  they  remain  still,  the  wisest 
text  which  a  man  can  take  with  him  as  a  direc- 
tory into  any  sphere  of  effective  social  activity. 

VII.  If  we  look  around  us  in  the  world  with 
a  view  to  discover  what  is  the  cause  of  the  sad 
deficiency  of  energy  often  put  forth  in  the  best 
of  causes,  we  shall  find  that  it  arises  generally 
from  some  sort  of  Narrowness.  A  man  will 
not  help  you  in  this  or  that  noble  undertaking 
simply  because  he  has  no  sympathy  with  it. 
Not  a  few  persons  are  a  sort  of  human  lobsters  ; 
they  live  in  a  hard  shell  formed  out  of  some 
professional,  ecclesiastical,  political,  or  classical 
crust,  and  cautiously  creep  their  way  within 
certain  beaten  bounds,  beyond  which  they  have 
no  desires.  The  meagre  and  uncxpansivc  life 
of  such  persons  teaches  us  what  we  want  in 
order  to  attain  to  a  wider  and  a  richer  range  of 


90  ON  MORAL   CULTURE. 

social  vitality.  The  octogenarian  poet-philos* 
opher  Goethe,  when  sinking  into  the  darkness 
of  death,  called  out  with  his  last  breath,  More 
LIGHT  !  What  every  young  man  should  call 
out  daily,  if  he  wishes  to  save  himself  from  the 
narrowing  crust  of  professional  and  other  lim- 
itations, is.  More  love  !  Men  are  often  clever 
enough,  but  they  don't  know  what  to  do  with 
their  cleverness  ;  they  are  good  swordsmen,  but 
they  have  no  cause  to  fight  for,  or  prefer  fight- 
ing in  a  bad  cause.  What  these  men  want  is 
Love.  The  precept  of  the  great  Apostle,  "  Weep 
with  those  who  weep,  and  rejoice  with  those  who 
rejoice"  if  it  were  grandly  carried  out  would 
make  every  man's  life  as  rich  in  universal 
sympathy  as  Shakespeare's  imagination  was  in 
universal  imagery.  Every  man  cannot  be  a 
poet ;  but  every  man  may  give  himself  some 
trouble  to  cultivate  that  kindly  and  genial 
sensibility  on  which  the  writing  and  the  ap- 
preciation of  poetry  depends.  To  live  poetry, 
indeed,  is  always  better  than  to  write  it  ;  better 
for  the  individual,  and  better  for  society.  Now 
a  poetical  life  is  just  a  life  opposed  to  all  same- 
ness and  all  selfishness  ;  eagerly  seizing  upon 
the  good  and  beautiful  from  all  quarters,  as  on 
its  proper  aliment.  Let  a  young  man,  therefore, 
above  all  things,  beware  of  shutting  himself  up 
within  a  certain  narrow  pale  of  sympathy,  anc/ 


ON  MORAL   CULTURE.  91 

fostering  unreasonable  hatreds  and  prejudices 
against  others.  An  honest  hater  is  often  a 
better  fellow  than  a  cool  friend  ;  but  it  is 
better  not  to  hate  at  all.  A  good  man  will  as 
much  as  possible  strive  to  be  shaken  out  c* 
himself,  and  learn  to  study  the  excellences  ol 
persons  and  parties  to  whom  he  is  naturally 
opposed.  It  was  an  admirable  trait  in  the 
character  of  the  late  distinguished  head  of  the 
utilitarian  school  of  ethics,  who  was  brought 
up  according  to  the  strictest  sect  of  a  narrow 
and  unsympathetic  school,  that  he  could  apply 
himself  in  the  spirit  of  kindly  recognition  to 
comprehend  two  such  antipodal  characters  as 
Coleridge  and  Thomas  Carlyle.  Never  allow 
yourself  to  indulge  in  sneering  condemnations 
of  large  classes  and  sections  of  your  fellow  be- 
ings ;  that  sort  of  talk  sounds  big,  but  is  in  fact 
puerile.  Never  refuse  to  entertain  a  man  in 
your  heart  because  all  the  world  is  talking 
against  him,  or  because  he  belongs  to  some 
sect  or  party  that  everybody  despises  ;  if  he  is 
universally  talked  against,  as  has  happened  to 
many  of  the  best  men  in  certain  circumstances, 
there  is  only  so  much  the  more  need  that  he 
should  receive  a  friendly  judgment  from  you 
"  Honor  all  men  "  is  one  of  the  many  texts  of 
combined  sanctity  and  sapience  with  which  the 
New  Testament  abounds  ;  but  this  you  cannot 


92  ON  MORAL   CULTURE. 

do  unless  you  try  to  know  all  men  ;  and  yoq 
know  no  man  till  you  have  looked  with  the 
eye  of  a  brother  into  the  best  that  is  in  him. 
To  do  this  is  the  true  moral  philosophy,  the 
best  human  riches  ;  a  wealth  which,  when  you 
have  quarried,  you  can  proceed,  as  a  good 
social  architect,  to  build  up  the  truth  in  love, 
with  regard  to  all  men,  and  make  your  deeds 
in  every  point  as  genuine  as  your  words. 

VIII.  There  is  a  class  of  young  men  in  the 
present  age  on  whose  face  one  imagines  that  he 
sees  written  Nil  Admirari.  This  is  not  at  all 
a  lovable  class  of  the  "  youth-head "  of  our 
land  ;  and,  unless  the  tone  of  not  wondering 
which  characterizes  their  manner  be  a  sort  of 
juvenile  affectation  destined  soon  to  pass  away, 
rather  a  hopeless  class.  Wonder,  as  Plato  has 
it,  is  a  truly  philosophic  passion  ;  the  more  we 
have  of  it,  accompanying  the  reverent  heart, 
of  course  with  a  clear  open  eye,  so  much  the 
better.  That  it  should  be  specially  abundant 
in  the  opening  scenes  of  life  is  in  the  healthy 
course  of  nature  ;  and  to  be  deficient  in  it  argues 
either  insensibility,  or  that  indifference,  selfish- 
ness, and  conceit,  which  are  sometimes  found 
combined  with  a  shallow  sort  of  cleverness  that 
with  superficial  observers  readily  passes  fox 
true  talent.     In    opposition    to   this   most  un- 


ON  MORAL   CULTURE.  93 

natural,  ungenial  habitude  of  mind,  we  say  to 
every  young  man,  cultivate  Reverence.  You 
will  not  see  much  of  this  virtue,  perhaps,  in  the 
democratic  exhibitions  in  which  the  present 
age  delights  ;  but  it  is  the  true  salt  of  the  soul 
for  all  that. 

"  We  livt  by  admiration,  hope,  and  love." 

We  are  small  creatures,  the  biggest  of  us,  and 
our  only  chance  of  becoming  great  in  a  sort  is 
by  participation  in  the  greatness  of  the  universe. 
St.  John,  in  a  beautiful  passage  of  his  First 
Epistle,  has  finely  indicated  the  philosophy  of 
this  matter.  "  Beloved,  now  are  we  the  sons 
of  God  ;  and  it  doth  not  yet  appear  what  we 
shall  be  ;  but  we  know  that  when  He  shall  ap- 
pear, we  shall  be  like  Him  ;  for  we  shall  see 
Him  as  He  is  ;" — that  is  to  say,  to  look  with 
admiring  rapture  on  a  type  of  perfect  excellence 
is  the  way  to  become  assimilated  to  that  excel- 
lence ;  what  the  uncorrupted  man  sees  in  such 
cases  he  admires  ;  and  what  he  admires  he 
imitates.  The  chief  end  of  man,  according  to 
the  Stoics,  was,  — "  Spectare  et  imitari  mun- 
DUM  !  " — a  fine  thought,  and  finely  expressed. 
But  how  shall  a  man  see  when  he  has  no 
admiring  faculty  which  shall  lead  him  to  see, 
and  how  shall  he  imitate  what  he  docs  not 
Know  .''  All  true  appreciation  is  the  result  of 
teen  insight  and   noble  passion  ;  but  the  habit 


94  ON  MORAL   CULTURE. 

of  despising  things  and  persons,  and  holding 
them  cheap,  blinds  the  one  factor  which  belongs 
to  the  complete  result,  and  strangles  the  other. 

IX.  In  morals  there  are  principles  of  inspi- 
ration and  principles  of  regulation  :  love  and 
reverence,  of  which  we  have  been  speaking,  be- 
long to  the  former  ;  Moderation,  of  which  we 
are  now  to  speak,  belongs  to  the  latter.  It  is 
a  virtue  of  which  young  men  generally  have  no 
conception,  and  for  deficiency  in  which  they  are 
lightly  pardoned  ;  but  it  is  a  virtue  not  the  less 
necessary  for  that,  and  if  they  will  not  learn  it 
in  what  medical  men  call  the  prophylactic  way, 

—  that  is,  timeously,  before  the  touch  of  danger, 

—  they  will  have  to  learn  it  at  no  very  long  date 
from  perilous  experience.  To  hot  young  blood 
it  is  an  admonition  which  sounds  as  cheap  as  it 
is  distasteful,  to  beware  of  excess ;  but  hot  young 
blood,  which  knows  well  enough  how  to  dash 
full  gallop  into  a  forest  of  bristling  spears,  is  no 
judge  of  that  caution  which  is  not  less  neces- 
sary than  courage  to  the  issue  of  a  successful 
campaign.  The  coolest  and  most  practical 
thinker  of  all  antiquity,  and  at  the  same  time 
•■he  man  of  the  widest  range  of  accurate  knowl- 
edge, Aristotle,  whose  name  is  almost  a  guar- 
anty for  right  opinion  in  all  things,  laid  it 
down  as  the  most  useful  rule  to  guide  men  ic 


ON  MORAL   CULTURE.  95 

the  difficult  art  of  living,  that  virtue  or  wise 
action  lies  in  the  mean  between  the  two  ex- 
tremes of  too  little  and  too  much.  Those  who 
are  just  starting  in  the  career  of  life,  however 
fond  they  may  be  of  strong  phrases,  strong 
passions,  unbridled  energies,  and  exuberant 
demonstrations  of  all  kinds,  may  rely  on  it, 
that  as  they  grow  in  true  manhood  they  will 
grow  in  all  sorts  of  moderation,  and  learn  to 
recognize  the  great  truth  that  those  are  the 
strongest  men,  not  who  the  most  wantonly  in- 
dulge, but  who  the  most  carefully  curb  their 
activities.  What  is  called  "  seediness,"  after  a 
debauch,  is  a  plain  proof  that  Nature  has  been 
outraged,  and  will  have  her  penalty.  All  de- 
bauch is  incipient  suicide ;  it  is  the  unseen 
current  beneath  the  house  which  sooner  or  later 
washes  away  the  foundations.  So  it  is  with 
study.  Long-continued  intense  mental  exercise, 
especially  in  that  ungrateful  and  ungenial  form 
of  the  acquisition  of  knowledge  called  Cram, 
weakens  the  brain,  disorders  the  stomach,  and 
makes  the  general  action  of  the  whole  organism 
languid  and  unemphatic.  Be  warned,  therefore, 
in  time  ;  violent  methods  will  certainly  produce 
violent  results  ;  and  a  vessel  that  once  gets  a 
crack,  though  it  may  be  cunningly  mended,  wiU 
never  stand  such  rough  usage  as  a  whole  one. 
Wisdom  is  a  good  thing ;   but  it  is  not  good 


96  ON  MORAL  CULTURE. 

even  to  be  wise  always.  "  Be  not  wise  over- 
much :  Why  shouldst  thou  die  before  thy  time  ?" 
Remember  who  said  that. 

X.  If  Great  Britain  be  unquestionably  the 
richest  country  in  the  world,  — so  much  so  in- 
deed that  Sidney  Smith,  always  witty  and 
always  wise,  felt  himself  justified  in  saying,  that 
it  is  "  the  only  country  in  which  poverty  is  a 
crime,"  then  certainly  it  is  of  paramount  impor- 
tance that  every  young  man,  when  starting  in 
the  race  of  Hfe  in  this  country,  should  stamp 
into  his  soul  the  fundamental  principle  of  all 
moral  philosophy,  that  the  real  dignity  of  a  man 
lies  not  in  what  he  Jias,  but  in  what  he  is.  "  The 
kingdom  of  heaven  is  within  you,"  —  not  with- 
out. Beware,  therefore,  of  being  infected  by 
the  moral  contagion  which  more  or  less  taints 
the  atmosphere  of  every  rich  trading  and  manu- 
facturing community,  —  the  contagion  which 
breeds  a  habit  of  estimating  the  value  of  men 
by  the  external  apparatus  of  life  rather  than  by 
its  internal  nobility.  A  dwarf,  perched  upon  a 
lofty  platform,  looks  over  the  heads  of  the  mul- 
titude, and  has  no  doubt  this  advantage  from 
his  position.  So  it  is  with  the  rich  man  who  is 
merely  rich  ;  he  acquires  a  certain  social  posi- 
tion, and  from  this,  perhaps,  gets  M.  P.  tagged 
to  his  name ;  but,  take  the  creature  down  from 


ON  MORAL    CULTURE.  97 

his  artificial  elevation,  and  look  him  fairly  in 
the  face,  and  you  will  find  that  he  is  a  figure 
too  insignificant  to  measure  swords  with.  Fix 
this,  therefore,  in  your  minds,  before  all  things, 
that  there  are  few  things  in  social  life  more 
contemptible  than  a  rich  man  who  stands  upon 
his  riches.  By  the  very  act  of  placing  so  high 
a  value  on  the  external,  he  has  lapsed  Irom  the 
true  character  of  his  kind,  and  inverted  the 
poles  of  human  value.  Have  money,  —  by  all 
means,  —  as  much  as  to  enable  you  to  pay  your 
tailor's  bill,  and,  if  possible,  have  a  comfortable 
glass  of  claret  or  port  to  help  you  to  digest 
your  dinner  ;  but  never  set  your  heart  on  what 
they  call  making  a  fortune.  Socrates,  Plato, 
Aristotle,  and  St.  Paul  (i  Tim.  vi.  9),  all  agree 
in  stating,  with  serious  emphasis,  that  money- 
making  is  not  an  ennobling  occupation,  and 
that  he  who  values  money  most  values  himself 
least.  Stand  strictly  on  your  moral  and  intel- 
lectual excellence,  and  you  will  find  in  the  long 
run,  when  the  true  value  of  things  comes  out, 
that  there  is  not  a  duke  or  a  millionaire  in  the 
land  who  can  boast  himself  your  superior. 

XI.   I  have  no  intention  of  running  through 

the  catalogue  of  the  virtues,  —  you  must  go  to 

Aristotle  for  that  ;  but  one  grace  of  character, 

which  is  an  essential  element  of  moral  great- 

7 


98  ON  MORAL   CULTURE. 

ness,  and  a  sure  pledge  of  all  kinds  of  success, 
I  cannot  omit,  and  that  is  Perseverance.  I 
never  knew  a  man  good  for  anything  in  the 
world,  who,  when  he  got  a  piece  of  work  to  do, 
did  not  know  how  to  stick  to  it.  The  poet 
Wordsworth,  in  his  "  Excursion,"  when  the  sky 
began  to  look  cloudy,  gives,  as  a  reason  for  go- 
ing on  with  his  mountain  perambulation,  that 
though  a  little  rain  might  be  disagreeable 
to  the  skin,  the  act  of  giving  up  a  fixed  pur- 
pose, in  view  of  a  slight  possible  inconvenience, 
is  dangerous  to  the  character.  There  is  much 
wisdom  here.  We  do  not  live  in  a  world  in 
which  a  man  can  afford  to  be  discouraged  by 
trifles.  There  are  real  difficulties  enough,  with 
which  to  fight  is  to  live,  and  which  to  conquer 
is  to  live  nobly.  A  friend  of  mine,  making  the 
ascent  of  Ben  Cruachan,  when  he  had  reached 
what  he  imagined  to  be  the  top,  found  that  the 
real  peak  was  two  miles  farther  on  to  the  west, 
and  that  the  road  to  it  lay  along  a  rough  stony 
ridge  not  easy  for  weary  feet  to  tread  on.  But 
this  was  a  small  matter.  The  peak  was  being 
enveloped  in  mist,  and  it  was  only  an  hour 
from  sunset.  He  wisely  determined  to  take  the 
nearest  way  down  ;  but  what  did  he  do  next 
day  }  He  ascended  the  Ben  again,  and  took 
his  dinner  triumphantly  on  the  topmost  top, 
in  order,  as  he  said,  that  the  name  of  this  most 


ON  MORAL   CULTURE.  99 

beautiful  of  Highland  Bens  might  not  forever 
be  associated  in  his  mind  with  bafflement  ana 
defeat.  This  sort  of  a  man,  depend  upon  it, 
will  succeed  in  everything  he  undertakes. 
Never  boggle  at  a  difficulty,  especially  at  the 
commencement  of  a  new  work.  Aller  Anfang 
ist  schwer,  —  all  beginnings  are  difficult,  as  the 
German  proverb  says  ;  and  the  more  excellent 
the  task  the  greater  the  difficulty.  XaAcTra  to 
KoKd.  Difficult  things,  in  fact,  are  the  only 
things  worth  doing,  and  they  are  done  by  a  de- 
termined will  and  a  strong  hand.  In  the  world 
of  action  will  is  power  ;  persistent  will,  with 
circumstances  not  altogether  unfavorable,  is 
victory  ;  nay,  in  the  face  of  circumstances  alto- 
gether unfavorable,  persistency  will  carve  out  a 
way  to  unexpected  success.  Read  the  life  of 
Frederick  the  Great  of  Prussia,  and  you  will 
understand  what  this  means.  Fortune  never 
will  favor  the  man  who  flings  away  the  dice- 
box  because  the  first  throw  brings  a  low  num- 
ber. 

I  will  now  conclude  with  a  few  remarks  on 
some  of  the  best  methods  of  acquiring  moral 
excellence. 

XII.  The  first  thing  to  be  attended  to  here 
is  to  have  it  distinctly  and    explicitly  graved 


lOO  ON  MORAL   CULTURE. 

into  the  soul,  that  there  is  only  one  thing  that 
can  give  significance  and  dignity  to  human 
life  —  viz.  Virtuous  Energy;  and  that  this 
energy  is  attainable  only  by  energizing.  If 
you  imagine  you  are  to  be  much  helped  by 
books,  and  reasons,  and  speculations,  and 
learned  disputations,  in  this  matter,  you  are 
altogether  naistaken.  Books  and  discourses 
may  indeed  awaken  and  arouse  you,  and  per- 
haps hold  up  the  sign  of  a  wise  finger-post  to 
prevent  you  from  going  astray  at  the  first  start, 
but  they  cannot  move  you  a  single  step  on  the 
road  ;  it  is  your  own  legs  only  that  can  perform 
the  journey  ;  it  is  altogether  a  matter  of  doing. 
Finger-posts  are  very  well  where  you  find 
them ;  but  the  sooner  you  can  learn  to  do 
without  them  the  better ;  for  you  will  not 
travel  long,  depend  upon  it,  before  you  come 
into  regions  of  moor,  and  mist,  and  bog,  and 
far  waste  solitudes  ;  and  woe  be  to  the  way- 
farer, in  such  case,  who  has  taught  himself  to 
travel  only  by  finger-posts  and  milestones ! 
You  must  have  a  compass  of  sure  direction  in 
your  own  soul,  or  you  may  be  forced  to  depend 
for  your  salvation  on  some  random  saviour, 
who  is  only  a  little  less  bewildered  than  your- 
self. Gird  up  your  loins  therefore,  and  prove 
the  all-important  truth,  that  as  you  learn  to 
walk  only  by  walking,  to  leap  by  leaping,  and 


ON  MORAL   CULTURE.  lOI 

to  fence  by  fencing,  so  you  can  learn  to  live 
tiobly  only  by  acting  nobly  on  every  occasion 
that  presents  itself.  If  you  shirk  the  first  trial 
of  your  manhood,  you  will  come  so  much  the 
weaker  to  the  second  ;  and  if  the  next  occasion, 
and  the  next  again,  finds  you  unprepared,  you 
will  infallibly  sink  into  baseness.  A  swimmer 
becomes  strong  to  stem  the  tide  only  by  fre- 
quently breasting  the  big  waves.  If  you  prac- 
tice always  in  shallow  waters,  your  heart  will 
assuredly  fail  you  in  the  hour  of  high  flood. 
General  notions  about  sin  and  salvation  can  do 
you  no  good  in  the  way  of  the  blessed  life.  As 
in  a  journey,  you  must  see  milestone  after  mile- 
stone fall  into  your  rear,  otherwise  you  remain 
stationary :  so,  in  the  grand  march  of  a  noble 
life,  one  paltriness  after  another  must  disap- 
pear, or  you  have  lost  your  chance. 

XIII.  Richter  gives  it  as  one  excellent  anti- 
dote against  moral  depression,  to  call  up  in  our 
darkest  moments  the  memory  of  our  brightest ; 
so,  in  the  dusty  struggle  and  often  tainted 
atmosphere  of  daily  business,  it  is  well  to  carry 
about  with  us  the  purifying  influence  of  a  high 
ideal  of  human  conduct,  fervidly  and  powerfully 
expressed.  Superstitious  persons  carry  amulets 
externally  on  their  breasts  •  carry  you  a  select 
store  of  holy  texts  within,  and  you  will  be  much 


102  ON  MORAL   CULTURE. 

more  effectively  armed  against  the  powers  of 
evil  than  any  most  absolute  monarch  behind  a 
bristling  body-guard.  Such  texts  you  may  find 
occurring  in  many  places,  from  the  Kalidasas 
and  Sakyamunis  of  the  East,  to  Pythagoras, 
Plato,  Aristotle,  and  Epictetus,  in  the  West  ; 
but  if  you  are  wise,  and  above  the  seduction  of 
showy  and  pretentious  novelties,  you  will  store 
your  memory  early  in  youth  with  the  golden 
texts  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments  ;  and,  as 
the  Bible  is  a  big  book,  —  not  so  much  a  book, 
indeed,  as  a  great  literature  in  small  bulk,  — 
perhaps  I  could  not  do  better  in  this  place  than 
indicate  for  you  a  few  books  or  chapters  which 
you  will  find  it  of  inestimable  value  to  graft  into 
your  soul  deeply  before  you  come  much  into 
contact  with  those  persons  of  coarse  moral  fibre, 
low  aspirations,  and  lukewarm  temperament, 
commonly  called  men  of  the  world.  First,  of 
course,  there  is  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  then 
the  13th  chapter  of  the  ist  Epistle  to  the  Corin- 
thians ;  then  the  Gospel  of  John  ;  then  the 
General  Epistle  of  James ;  the  two  Epistles  to 
Timothy  ;  the  8th  chapter  of  the  Romans  ;  the 
5th  and  6th  chapters  of  the  Ephesians  ;  and  the 
same  chapters  of  the  Galatians.  In  the  Old 
Testament  every  day's  experience  will  reveal  t« 
you  more  clearly  the  profound  v^^isdom  of  the 
Book  of  Proverbs.     As  a  guide  throusrh  life  it 


ON  MORAL   CULTURE.  103 

is  not  possible  to  find  a  better  directory  than 
this  book  ;  and  I  remember  the  late  Principal 
Lee,  who  knew  Scotland  well,  saying  with  em- 
phasis, that  our  country  owed  no  small  part  of 
the  practical  sagacity  for  which  it  is  so  famed, 
to  an  early  familiarity  with  this  body  of  prac- 
tical wisdom,  which,  in  old  times,  used  to  be 
printed  separately,  and  found  in  every  man's 
pocket.  For  seasons  of  devout  meditation,  of 
course,  the  Psalms  of  the  great  minstrel  monarch 
are  more  to  be  commended  ;  and  among  them 
I  should  recommend  specially,  as  calculated 
to  infuse  a  spirit  of  deep  and  catholic  piety 
into  the  souls  of  the  young,  —  Psalms  i.  viii, 
xix.  xxiv.  xxxii.  xxxvii.  xlix.  li.  liii.  Ixxiii.  xc.  ciii. 
civ.  cvii.  cxxi.  cxxxi.  cxxxiii.  And  these  Psalms 
ought  not  only  to  be  frequently  read,  till  they 
make  rich  the  blood  of  the  soul  with  a  genial 
and  generous  piety,  but  they  ought  to  be  sung 
to  their  proper  music  till  they  create  round  us 
a  habitual  atmosphere  of  pure  and  elevated 
sentiment,  which  we  breathe  as  the  breath  of 
our  higher  life.  This  is  the  sort  of  emotional 
drill  which  that  grand  old  heathen  Plato  enjoins 
with  such  eloquence  in  some  of  the  wisest 
chapters  of  his  lofty-minded  polity,  but  a  drill 
which  we  British  Christians,  with  all  our  pre- 
tensions, in  these  latter  times  seem  somewhat 
backward  to  understand. 


104  ON  MORAL  CULTURE. 

XIV.  Perhaps  even  more  important  towards 
the  achievement  of  a  noble  life  than  a  memory 
well  stored  with  sacred  texts,  is  an  imagination 
well  decorated  with  heroic  pictures  ;  in  other 
words,  there  is  no  surer  method  of  becoming 
good,  and  it  may  be  great  also,  than  an  early 
familiarity  with  the  lives  of  great  and  good 
men.  So  far  as  my  experience  goes,  there  is 
no  kind  of  sermon  so  effective  as  the  example 
of  a  great  man.  Here  we  see  the  thing  done 
before  us,  —  actually  done,  —  a  thing  of  which 
we  were  not  even  dreaming  ;  and  the  voice 
speaks  forth  to  us  with  a  pctency  like  the  voice 
of  many  waters,  "  Go  thou  atid  do  likewise!^ 
Why  not }  No  doubt,  not  every  man  is  a  hero  ; 
and  heroic  opportunities  are  not  given  every 
day  ;  but  if  you  cannot  do  the  same  thing, 
you  may  do  something  like  it ;  if  you  are  not 
planted  on  as  high  or  as  large  a  stage,  you  can 
show  as  much  manhood,  and  manifest  as  much 
virtuous  persistency,  on  a  small  scale.  Every 
man  may  profit  by  the  example  of  truly  great 
men,  if  he  is  bent  on  making  the  most  of  him- 
self and  his  circumstances.  It  is  altogether  a 
delusion  to  measure  the  greatness  of  men  by 
the  greatness  of  the  stage  on  which  they  act,  or 
the  volume  of  the  sound  with  which  the  worlA 
loves  to  reverberate  their  achievements.  A 
Moltke  in  council,  on  the  eve  of  a  great  battle 


ON  MORAL   CULTURE.  IO5 

which  is  to  shift  the  centre  of  gravity  of  our 
western  political  system,  is  only  acting  on  a 
maxim  of  practical  wisdom  that  requires  to  be 
applied  with  as  much  discrimination,  tact,  and 
delicacy,  by  the  provost  of  a  provincial  town 
planning  a  water-bill  or  a  tax  for  the  improve- 
ment of  the  city.  Nay,  that  moral  heroism  is 
often  greatest  of  which  the  world  says  least, 
and  which  is  exercised  in  the  humblest  spheres, 
and  in  circles  the  most  unnoticed.  Let  us 
therefore  turn  our  youthful  imaginations  into 
great  picture-galleries  and  Walhallas  of  the 
heroic  souls  of  all  times  and  all  places  ;  and  we 
shall  be  incited  to  follow  after  good,  and  be 
ashamed  to  commit  any  sort  of  baseness  in  the 
direct  view  of  such  "  a  cloud  of  witnesses. " 
Would  you  know  what  faith  means,  leave  Cal- 
vinists  and  Arminians  to  split  straws  about 
points  of  doctrine  ;  but  do  you  read  and  digest 
that  splendid  eleventh  chapter  of  the  Hebrews, 
and  you  will  escape  forever  from  the  netted 
snares  of  theological  logomachy.  In  this  sub- 
lime chapter  the  great  Apostle  is  merely  giv- 
ing a  succinct  summation  of  the  method  of 
teaching  by  concrete  examples,  with  which  the 
Scriptures  are  so  richly  studded,  and  of  which 
our  modern  sermons  are  mostly  so  destitute. 
When  I  see  our  young  men  lolling  on  sofas, 
and  grinning  over  those  sorry  caricatures  of 


I06  ON  MORAL   CULTURE. 

numanity  with  which  the  pages  of  Thackeraj 
and  other  popular  novelists  are  filled,  I  often 
wonder  what  sort  of  a  human  life  can  be  ex- 
pected to  grow  up  from  that  early  habit  of 
learning  to  sneer,  or  at  best,  to  be  amused,  at 
an  age  when  seriousness  and  devout  admira- 
tion are  the  only  seeds  out  of  which  any  future 
nobleness  can  be  expected  to  grow.  For  my- 
self, I  honestly  confess  that  I  never  could  learn 
anything  from  Thackeray  ;  there  is  a  certain 
feeble  amiability  even  about  his  best  characters, 
which,  if  it  is  free  from  the  depressing  in- 
fluence of  his  bad  ones,  is  certainly  anything 
but  bracing.  One  of  the  best  of  Greek  books, 
once  in  everybody's  hands,  now,  I  fear,  fallen 
considerably  into  the  shade,  is  Plutarch.^  Here 
you  have,  whether  for  youth  or  manhood,  in  the 
shape  of  living  examples  of  the  most  rich  and 
various  type,  the  very  stuff  from  which  human 
efficiency  must  ever  be  made.  Our  accurate 
critical  historians  have  a  small  educational 
value  when  set  against  that  fine  instinct  for  all 
true  human  greatness,  and  that  genial  sympathy 
with  all  human  weakness,  which  shine  out  so 
conspicuously  in  the  classical  picture-gallery 
of  that  rare  old  Boeotian.  Let  therefore  our 
young  men  study  to  make  themselves  familiar, 

^ "  I  read   with  great   delight   Langhome's   translation   9 
Plutarch.  "  —  J.  S.  Mill,  Autobiography. 


ON  MORAL   CULTURE.  10/ 

not  with  the  fribbles,  oddities,  and  monstrosities 
of  humanity,  set  forth  in  fictitious  narratives^ 
but  with  the  real  blood  and  bone  of  human 
heroism  which  the  select  pages  of  biography 
present.  An  Athenian  Pericles,  with  noble 
magnanimity,  telling  his  servant  to  take  a  lamp 
and  show  a  scurrilous  reviler  politely  the  way 
home  ;  a  German  Luther,  having  his  feet  shod 
with  the  gospel  of  peace,  and  the  sword  of  the 
Spirit  in  his  hands,  marching  with  cheerful 
confidence  against  an  embattled  array  of  kai- 
sers and  cardinals  ;  a  Pastor  Oberlin  in  a 
remote  mountain  parish  of  Alsace,  flinging  be- 
hind him  the  bland  allurements  of  metropolitan 
preferment,  and  turning  his  little  rocky  diocese 
into  a  moral  and  physical  paradise,  —  these  are 
great  stereotyped  Facts,  which  should  drive 
themselves  like  goads  into  the  hearts  of  the 
young.  No  man  can  contradict  a  fact ;  but  the 
best  fictions,  without  a  deep  moral  significance 
beneath,  are  only  iridescent  froth,  beautiful 
now,  but  which  a  single  puff  of  air  blows  into 
nothingness. 

XV,  Better,  much  better,  than  even  the  mir- 
ror of  greatness  in  the  biographies  of  truly 
great  men,  is  the  living  influence  of  such  men 
when  you  have  the  happiness  of  coming  in 
lontact  with  them.     The  best  books  are  only  a 


I08  ON  MORAL   CULTURE. 

clever  machinery  for  stirring  the  nobler  natur*, 
but  they  act  indirectly  and  feebly  ;  they  may 
be  remote  also,  dry  and  dusty  upon  the  library 
shelves,  not  even  on  your  table,  and  very  far 
from  your  heart.  But  a  living  great  man,  com- 
ing across  your  path,  carries  with  him  an  elec- 
tric influence  which  you  cannot  escape  —  that 
is,  of  course  if  you  are  capable  of  being  affected 
in  a  noble  way,  for  the  blind  do  not  see,  and 
the  dead  do  not  feel  ;  and  there  is  a  class  of 
people  —  very  reputable  people  perhaps  in 
their  way — in  whose  breasts  the  epiphany  of 
a  Christ  will  only  excite  the  remark,  "  He  hath 
a  devil!"  Supposing,  however,  that  you  are 
not  one  of  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees,  but  a 
young  man  starting  on  the  journey  of  life  with 
a  reverential  receptiveness  and  a  delicate  sen- 
sibility, such  as  belong  to  well-conditioned 
youth,  in  this  case  the  greatest  blessing  that 
can  happen  to  you  is  to  come  directly  into 
contact  with  some  truly  great  man,  and  the 
closer  the  better  ;  for  it  is  only  the  morally 
noble,  and  not  the  intellectually  clever,  in 
whom  greater  intimacy  always  reveals  greater 
excellences.  To  have  felt  the  thrill  of  a  fervid 
humanity  shoot  through  your  veins  at  the 
touch  of  a  Chalmers,  a  Macleod,  or  a  Bunsen, 
is  to  a  young  man  of  a  fine  susceptibility  worth 
more  than  all  the  wisdom  of  the  Greeks,  all  the 


ON  MORAL   CULTURE. 


109 


learning  of  the  Germans,  and  all  the  sagacity 
of  the  Scotch.  After  such  a  vivific  influence, 
the  light  witlings  may  sneer  as  they  please,  and 
the  grave  Gamaliels  may  frown  ;  but  you  know 
in  whom  you  have  believed,  and  you  believe 
because  you  have  seen,  and  you  grow  with  a 
happy  growth,  and  your  veins  are  full  of  sap, 
because  you  have  been  engrafted  into  the  stem 
of  a  true  vine.  And  if  it  be  not  your  good  for- 
tune to  come  under  the  direct  genial  expansive 
virtue  of  some  great  moral  sun,  you  are  not 
altogether  left  to  chance  in  the  moral  influ- 
ences with  which  you  are  surrounded.  If  you 
cannot  always  avoid  the  contagion  of  low  com- 
pany, you  may  at  all  events  ban  yourself  from 
voluntarily  marching  into  it.  There  are  few 
situations  in  life  where  you  may  not  have  some 
power  of  choosing  your  companions ;  and  re- 
member that  moral  contagion,  like  the  infec- 
tious power  of  physical  diseases,  borrows  half 
its  strength  from  the  weakness  of  the  subject 
with  which  it  comes  in  contact.  If  you  were 
only  half  as  pure  as  Christ,  you  might  go  about 
with  harlots  and  be  nothing  the  worse  for  it. 
As  it  is,  however,  and  considering  the  weak- 
ness of  the  flesh,  and  the  peculiar  temptations 
of  puberty,  the  best  thing  you  can  do  is  to 
make  a  sacred  vow,  on  no  occasion  and  on  no 
tccount    to  keep  company   with   persons  who 


no  ON  MORAL   CULTURE. 

will  lead  you  into  haunts  of  dissipation  and  de- 
bauchery. No  amount  of  hilarious  excitement 
or  momentary  sensuous  lustihood  can  compen- 
sate for  the  degradation  which  your  moral  na- 
ture must  suffer  by  associating,  on  familiar  and 
tolerant  terms  with  the  most  degraded  and 
abandoned  of  the  human  species.  There  can 
be  no  toleration  for  vice.  We  may,  yea  and 
we  ought,  to  weep  for  the  sinner,  but  we  must 
not  sport  with  the  sin.  Remember  in  this  re- 
gard what  happened  to  Robert  Burns.  He 
knew  very  well  how  to  preach,  but  his  practice 
was  a  most  miserable  performance,  reminding 
us  at  every  step  of  the  terrible  sarcastic  sen- 
tence of  Pliny,  "  There  is  nothing  more  proud 
or  tnore paltry  than  Man,"  Have  you  care  that 
you  do  not  follow  the  example  of  that  mis- 
chanceful  bard,  without  having  his  hot  blood 
and  high-pressure  vitality  to  excuse  or  to  pal- 
liate your  follies.  Let  your  company  be  always, 
where  possible,  better  than  yourself;  and  when 
you  have  the  misfortune  to  move  amongst  your 
inferiors,  bear  in  mind  this  seriously,  that  if 
you  do  not  seize  the  apt  occasion  to  draw  them 
up  to  your  level  —  which  requires  wisdom  as 
well  as  love  —  they  will  certainly  not  be  slow 
to  drag  you  down  to  theirs. 

XVI.  "  Men  may  try  many  things,"  said  the 


ON  MORAL   CULTURE.  Ill 

wise  old  bard  of  Weimar ;  "  only  not  live  at 
random  ; "  and  if  you  would  not  live  at  random, 
it  will  be  necessary  for  you  to  fix  set  times  for 
calling  yourself  to  account.  In  commercial 
transactions  it  is  found  a  great  safeguard  against 
debt,  to  pay  for  everything,  as  much  as  possible, 
in  cash,  and,  where  that  is  not  possible,  not  to 
run  long  accounts,  but  to  strike  clear  balances 
at  certain  set  seasons.  Exactly  so  in  our  ac- 
counts with  God  and  with  our  souls.  The  best 
charts  and  the  most  accurate  compasses  will 
bring  no  profit  to  the  man  who  does  not  get 
into  the  habit  of  regularly  using  them.  In  this 
view  the  illustrious  practice  of  the  old  Pytha- 
goreans (who  were  a  church  as  much  as  a  school) 
presents  a  good  model  for  us. 

"  Let  not  soft  sleep  usurp  oblivious  sway 
Till  thrice  you've  told  the  deeds  that  mark'd  the  day; 
Whither  thy  steps.'  what  thing  for  thee  most  fitted 
Was  aptly  done  ?  and  what  good  deed  omitted  ? 
And  when  you've  summed  the  tale,  wipe  out  the  bad 
With  gracious  grief,  and  in  the  good  be  glad  ! " 

No  man,  in  my  opinion,  will  ever  attain  to  high 
excellence  in  what  an  excellent  old  divine  calls 
"the  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of  man,"  without 
cultivating  stated  periods  of  solitude,  and  using 
that  solitude  for  the  important  purpose  of  self- 
knowledge  and  self-amelioration.  "  Commune 
with  your  own  heart  on  your  bed,  and  be  still," 
said  the  Psalmist. 


112  ON  MORAL   CUT. TURF.. 

"  Who  never  ate  with  tears  his  bread, 

And  through  the  long-drawn  midnight  hooia 
Sat  weeping  on  his  lonely  bed, 

He  knows  you  not,  ye  heavenly  Powers  !  " 

are  the  well-known  words  of  a  poet  who  cer- 
tainly cannot  be  accused  of  being  either  Metho- 
distical  in  his  habits  or  mawkish  in  his  tone. 
**  Let  not  the  sun  go  down  upon  your  wrath," 
said   St.  Paul  ;  —  all  which  utterances  plainly 
imply  the  utility  of  such  stated  seasons  of  moral 
review  as  the  Pythagorean  verses  prescribe,  and 
as  we  see  now  in  most  European  countries  in 
the  institution  of  the  Christian  Sabbath  waiting 
to  be  utilized.     No  doubt  the  Jewish  Sabbath 
was  originally  instituted  simply  for  the  rest  of 
the  body ;  and  it  was  most  wise  and  politic  that 
this  Christian's  "  Lord's-day,"  set   apart  for  a 
purely  religious  purpose,  should  have  adopted 
this  hygienic  element  also  into  its  composition  ; 
but    with    such    a    fair    arena  of  enlargement 
opened  periodically,  bringing  perfect  freedom 
from  the  trammels  of  engrossing  professions,  he 
is  not  a  wise  man  who  does  not  devote  at  least 
one  part  of  the  Christian  Sabbath  to  the  serious 
work  of  moral  self-review.     Not  a  few  severe 
criticisms    have  been    made   by  foreigners  on 
what  has  been  called  the  "  bitter  observance  " 
of  the  Sunday  by  the  Scotch  ;  but  these  hasty 
critics  ouffht  to  have  reflected  how  much  of  the 


ON  MORAL   CULTURE.  II3 

Bolidity,  sobriety,  and  general  reliability  of  the 
Scottish  character  is  owing  to  their  serious  and 
thoughtful  observance  of  these  recurrent  periods 
of  sacred  rest.  The  eternal  whirl  and  fiddle  of 
life,  so  characteristic  o\  our  gay  Celtic  neigh- 
bors across  the  Channel,  is  apt  to  beget  an 
excitability  and  a  frivolity  in  the  conduct  of 
even  the  most  serious  affairs,  which  is  incom- 
patible with  true  moral  greatness.  If  we  Scotch 
impart  somewhat  of  an  awful  character  to  our 
piety  by  not  singing  on  Sunday,  the  French 
certainly  would  march  much  more  steadily,  and 
more  creditably,  on  the  second  day  of  the  week, 
if  they  cultivated  a  more  sober  tone  on  the 
first. 

XVII.  In  connection  with  the  delicate  func- 
tion of  moral  self-review,  it  occurs  naturally  to 
mention  Prayer.  In  this  scientific  age,  when 
everything  is  analyzed,  and  anatomized,  and 
tabulated,  there  is  a  tendency  to  talk  of  knowl- 
edge as  a  power  to  which  all  things  are  subject. 
But  the  maxim  that  knowledge  is  power  is  true 
only  where  knowledge  is  the  main  thing  wanted. 
There  are  higher  things  than  knowledge  in  the 
world  ;  there  are  living  energies  ;  and  in  the 
moral  world,  certainly,  it  is  not  knowledge  but 
aspiration  that  is  the  moving  power,  and  the 
wing  of  aspiration  is  prayer.    Where  aspiration 


114  ON  MORAL   CULTURE. 

is  wanting,  the  soul  creeps  ;  it  cannot  fly ;  it 
Is  at  best  a  caged  bird,  curiously  busy  in  count- 
ing and  classifying  the  bars  of  its  own  confine- 
ment. Of  course,  we  do  not  mean  that  any 
person  should  be  so  full  of  his  own  little  self, 
and  so  ignorant  of  the  grandeur  of  the  universe, 
as  to  besiege  the  ear  of  Heaven  with  petitions 
that  the  laws  of  the  universe  shall  be  changed 
any  moment  that  may  suit  his  convenience. 
We  do  not  pray  that  we  may  alter  the  Divine 
decrees,  but  that  our  human  will  may  learn  to 
move  in  harmony  with  the  Divine  will.  How 
far  with  regard  to  any  special  matter,  not 
irrevocably  fixed  in  the  Divine  concatenation 
of  possibilities,  our  petition  may  prevail,  we 
never  can  tell ;  but  this  we  do  know,  that  the 
most  natural  and  the  most  effectual  means  of 
keeping  our  own  noblest  nature  in  harmony 
with  the  source  of  all  vital  nobleness,  is  to  hold 
high  emotional  communion  with  that  source, 
and  to  plant  ourselves  humbly  in  that  attitude 
of  devout  receptiveness  which  is  the  one  be- 
coming attitude  in  the  created  towards  the 
Creator.  Practically,  there  is  no  surer  test  of 
a  man's  moral  diathesis  than  the  capacity  of 
prayer.  He,  at  least  in  a  Christian  country, 
must  be  an  extremely  ignorant  man,  who  could 
invoke  the  Divine  blessing  day  after  day,  on  acts 
of  manifest  turpitude,  falsehood,  or  folly.      In 


ON  MORAL   CULTURE.  1 15 

the  old  heathen  times,  a  man  in  certain  circum- 
stances might  perhaps,  with  a  clear  conscience, 
have  prayed  to  a  Dionysus  or  an  Aphrodite  to 
consecrate  his  acts  of  drunkenness  or  de- 
bauchery ;  but,  thanks  to  the  preaching  of  the 
Galilean  fishermen,  we  have  got  beyond  that 
now  ;  and  universal  experience  declares  the  fact 
that  genuine  private  prayer  (for  I  do  not  speak 
of  course  of  repeating  routine  formularies), 
which  is  the  vital  element  of  a  noble  moral 
nature,  is  to  the  coarse,  sensual,  and  selfish 
man,  an  atmosphere  which  he  cannot  breathe. 
Take,  therefore,  young  man,  the  apostolic 
maxim  with  you  —  Pray  without  ceasing. 
Keep  yourself  always  in  an  attitude  of  rever- 
ential dependence  on  the  Supreme  Source  of 
all  good.  It  is  the  most  natural  and  speediest 
and  surest  antidote  against  that  spirit  of  shallow 
self-confidence  and  brisk  impertinence  so  apt 
to  spring  up  with  the  knowledge  without 
charity  which  pufieth  up  and  edifieth  not. 
What  a  pious  tradition  has  taught  us  to  do 
daily  before  our  principal  meal,  as  a  comely 
ceremony,  let  us  learn  to  do  before  every 
serious  act  of  our  life,  not  as  a  cold  form,  but 
as  a  fervid  reality.  Go  forth  to  battle,  brave 
young  man,  like  David,  with  your  stone  ready, 
and  your  sling  well  poised  ;  but  be  sure  that 
you  are  fighting  the  battle  of  the  God  of  Israel, 


Il6  ON  MORAL   CULTURE. 

not  of  the  devil.  Whether  you  have  a  sword 
or  a  pen  in  your  hand,  wield  neither  the  one 
nor  the  other  in  a  spirit  of  insolent  self-reliance 
or  of  vain  self-exhibition  ;  and,  not  less  in  the 
hour  of  exuberant  enjoyment  than  in  the  day 
of  dark  despondency  and  despair,  be  always 
ready  to  say,  —  "  Bless  me,  even  me  axso,  O 
MY  Father ! " 


STATE  NORMAL  SCHOOL. 

LiOS  ANGEUES,  CAli. 


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